


All I See is You

by H20loo



Series: In the Still of the Night [6]
Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: Divorce, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 13:37:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 59,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4566579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/H20loo/pseuds/H20loo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>21 years ago, Kim lost the love of her life. She has never gotten over it, and now she is the midst of a divorce from Ron. But turning her anger on the criminals she has sworn to bring to justice causes unforeseen consequences for both Kim and her family</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Intro

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the characters belong to Disney and I do this for fun not profit. This story will be sad and violent in spots, and most of the characters are going to cuss like me in traffic, hence the M.

Chapter 1 - Intro

"I want a divorce," Ron stated flatly.

Kim glanced over from the evening newscast she was watching. "I'm sorry; I must have heard wrong," she said. "Did you say that you wanted a divorce?" she clarified, puzzled.

"That is exactly what I said," Ron confirmed.

Kim flipped off the television and turned around. There was no humor in Ron's bearing at all; it was excessively clear that he wasn't joking. "Why on earth do you want a divorce?" Kim asked, her confusion and rising anger evident in her voice. "We've been married for twenty years, Ron. We have three kids. We are, or at least I thought we were, happily married. Is this some sort of midlife crisis?"

"No, it's not," Ron replied. He sighed. "Look, Kim, in spite of what you think, we have never been happily married. Sure, we have pretended to be, but we never have been. The only time in this entire relationship I can ever remember feeling joy is when the kids were born."

"How can you say that, Ron?" Kim demanded, baffled by the sudden turnaround and more than a little pissed off by it. "After everything that we have been through, you tell me this now?" She wanted to say more, but she was angry and her thoughts weren't coming clearly like they should. One thought did surface, though, and it angered Kim even more. "Is there someone else?" she asked quietly, not wanting to hear the answer.

"Yes," Ron answered. "But I am not the one who has been cheating."

"I'm the unfaithful one?" Kim asked incredulously. "When? In the four hours a day I actually have to sleep? And who is this mystery person that I would sacrifice what little free time I have?"

"It's not a person, Kim," Ron contradicted. "It is everything. Your job, your career, saving the world, even the kids…you love them all more than you love me."

"I do not," Kim objected.

"Yes, you do," Ron countered. "And even before all that, even before your job and the kids took over our lives, you still never loved me as much as I loved you. The only one you ever loved like that was her."

"Was she," Kim corrected distractedly, her thoughts jumping from the situation at hand to the person he was referring to.

"Whatever. You know who I am talking about, Kim," Ron said sadly, and Kim did know who he was talking about. He was talking about the only person who had ever come between them, the woman she had reformed, the woman who had stolen her heart, and the woman who had ultimately perished in her arms. She didn't say anything, and she didn't have to. Ron already knew he was right. "I'll be back in the morning for my stuff," he said. He turned and left, leaving Kim to reminisce about times long gone by.


	2. I Only Want To Be With You

Chapter 2 – I Only Want To Be With You

GJ Headquarters – 22 years ago

"Kim Possible, I say Kim!" Drakken called out as Kim left Dr. Director's office.

"Oh, hey, Dr. D," Kim said, stopping short. One of his vines waved at her and she waved back. It had been four years, but it still wigged Kim out ever so slightly that she, Drakken and Shego were now friends and that he worked for GJ. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Did Dr. Director just send you on another mission or could I possibly ask to do me a small favor?" he asked.

"No, Dr. Director just put me on call for the summer, so I only have to come in if there's an emergency," Kim answered. "She says I'm gonna need to rest up from college so I can get right to work when I start working here permanently in September. What kind of favor do you need?"

Drakken's face fell and his vines drooped. "Shego's disappeared and she's been gone for over two weeks this time," he confided.

Kim frowned and nodded. Shego, unlike Drakken, had never really adjusted to being on the side of good, and she was prone to bouts of moodiness that made her disappear for days, sometimes weeks. She usually returned on her own, but sometimes she didn't and Drakken, especially now that they had become engaged, fretted until he had tracked her down. If he was asking her for help, that meant Shego had done a really good job of covering her tracks and he couldn't find her this time, which in turn meant that Kim, as her best friend, was now the person who had the best chance of finding her and he was hoping she would be able to help him. "I'll see if I can find her, Dr. D," Kim promised.

"Oh, thank you so much, Kim," Drakken said gratefully.

"It's really no problem," she assured him. He beamed at her and went bustling away, called to duty by the echoing voice of Dr. Director. Kim sighed. It wasn't the way she had been planning to spend her time off, but if one of her best friends was involved, relaxation was going to have to wait, especially since Kim had an inexplicable bad feeling about this particular disappearance, probably tied to the fact that Shego and Drakken were getting married in about a month and Shego had not been very circumspect about her reservations about getting married. Add in the fact Shego usually told her when and where she was taking off, but this time she hadn't said a word, and the situation worried Kim, especially since Kim had been so busy she hadn't noticed Shego was gone.

"Wade!" she demanded, activating her ear-bud Kimmunicator.

"What do you need, Kim?" Wade replied back.

"I have a wayward GJ agent I need to track," Kim answered.

"Shego disappear again?" Wade guessed. Shego was the only GJ agent Kim would ever care about tracking and Wade knew she had a tendency to disappear.

"Yup," Kim said. "Drakken can't find her and this time she didn't tell me where she was going."

Wade tapped a few keys. "All the GJ jets are still in the hangar," he mused. He tapped a few more keys. "How long has she been gone?" he asked, knowing he was going to have to delve a little deeper than using a tracking device.

"According to Drakken, two weeks," Kim answered.

More tapping followed. "Can he be any more specific?" Wade asked.

"He's gone, so no," Kim retorted. "And how do you know she took a plane?"

"Well, according to the surveillance cameras in the garage at her and Drakken's place, her car is still there, and she hasn't used her credit cards to buy any kind of ticket," Wade answered. "A plane would be the only kind of ride she could get for free."

"But she could be walking, she might have used cash or she might have stolen a car," Kim pointed out. "Maybe some gave her a ride?"

"Quit being an anal pain in the ass, Kim," Wade said, cutting her off good-naturedly. "She's a pilot; Logic would dictate she took a plane."

"Yeah, but Drakken couldn't find her," Kim reminded him testily. "Even he would know to check the planes."

"Easy, Kim," Wade said evenly, knowing she only got snippy when she was upset. "This is me you're talking to. Drakken went through the GJ guys; I'm better than they are and that's why I am on your payroll and not theirs. Shego disappears like this all of the time. Why is this time different?"

"Because I don't know where she is this time, Wade," Kim snapped. "I always know where she is."

"And why is that bugging you so much?" Wade countered. "You don't care this much when Ron is gone for a few days," he said pointedly. He had been with Kim too long not to notice some things and Kim's conflicted feelings about and, truth be told, preference for Shego were pretty damn obvious. But Kim refused to acknowledge it, and so he got these little jabs in whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Kim was grateful that they were using the audio-only ear buds and Wade couldn't see her face; it might have given far too much away, and Wade already knew too much. "I don't have to worry that Ron is going to turn back into a supervillain," Kim said flatly, though that was her last concern as far as Shego was concerned too. "And I know where he is."

Wade wanted to say more but he decided to drop it. "Gimme a few minutes, Kim," he requested. "I'll have her coordinates within the hour."

"Promise?" Kim asked, calming down somewhat.

"Promise," Wade answered. "Now settle the hell down would you?"

"I'll try," Kim promised. "Talk to you later, Wade." She tapped the bud to shut it off, and looked around wondering how she was going to kill the hour. She decided a snack at the commissary might take her mind off things. She grabbed the elevator and headed down to the basement, and it wasn't until she had sat down at table with her fries and coke that she turned her mind to rationalizing why in the hell she was so damn freaked out about Shego's latest disappearance.

She squirted ketchup on her fries and used a random fried potato product to push some of the red stuff around as she thought about Shego, her life and Wade's stupid but really not-so-stupid comment. His point was legitimate, Kim conceded as she bit down on a fry. Ron was often gone nowadays; his rapidly-rising status within the Smarty Mart Corporation had meant many promotions and many business trips to go with those promotions, but it never really bothered Kim when he was gone. Sometimes it was actually a relief to come home to a nice quiet apartment. Ron was her best friend, though, and her boyfriend/fiancé, he should matter more than a "good" friend.

Except he didn't, at least not anymore, Kim realized, pensively discarding one fry in favor of another. She and Shego had grown really close in the last four years; with no good/evil dynamic thing they had to deal with, they found out they liked hanging out together and they did a lot of it, especially over the summers when Kim was interning with GJ and she saw far more of Shego than she did of Ron. And even when she was in school and away from GJ, they still managed to find time to get together, usually just to talk, and those talks made Kim realize how much more she had in common with Shego than she did with Ron, a situation that grew more and more pronounced as her and Ron's career paths diverged.

Kim sighed and grabbed her coke, taking a sip. She shook her head. This stupid line of thought was getting her nowhere. She already knew that Wade and his annoying little remarks were correct and Shego was threatening to supplant Ron's place in her life, but that still didn't answer the question about why she was so freaked out that Shego had disappeared. Maybe Shego becoming more important than Ron and running away from her husband-to-be meant that she was finally going to come to terms with what happened between her and Shego four years ago, a quiet, almost mocking voice interjected. Maybe that accounted for the freak-out, it reasoned. She ignored it as she had for four years and continued to munch on her fries. No, it was just stress; she had just gotten done with finals and graduated from college and now she needed to decompress. Yeah, that was it, she decided, and it was really just a random bad feeling that really had nothing to do with Ron, Shego or how she felt about either of them.

She finished her food and wandered back to the elevator, hopping in and pushing the button for the lobby. The car started going up, and as soon as it started to move, her ear-bud chirped. "Whatcha got, Wade?" Kim asked casually, badly pretending that she didn't care.

"She took a plane," he said triumphantly. "The Team Go jet was reported missing a little over two weeks ago, and after liberating the tracking device frequency from the Go Tower computers, I tracked it to a little island in the Caribbean."

"But what if someone else stole the plane?" Kim asked reasonably.

"It's one of Drakken's old lairs," Wade replied. Kim nodded; that Wade figured it was Shego would seem to make sense. "But just to make sure, because I know how you are, I used the security cameras that GJ put up on the outside of all of Drakken's old lairs to scout around. Guess who came out for an early afternoon sunbath?"

"Thanks, Wade," Kim said.

"No problem, Kim," Wade replied. "I downloaded the coordinates to hovercraft number AFL45, so you just have to fly her there."

"Awesome," Kim said, pushing floor number seven now she knew where she was going.

"Talk to you later, Kim," Wade said.

"Bye, Wade," Kim replied. She hopped out of the elevator car at her floor, flashed her badge at the sentry on duty and looked for the hovercraft with the serial number Wade had told her. She found it easily enough and climbed in, strapping herself down, putting on the headphones and contacting the tower. "This is AFL45 to tower, request permission to depart."

"That's a negative, Agent Possible," the tower operator told her. "This craft isn't scheduled to fly today."

"Are you sure?" Kim asked, faking innocence. "Dr. Director gave me orders an hour ago."

"Standby," the operator requested, checking his computer. There was a pause, and his voice came crackling over the line. "Apologies, Agent Possible," he said. "You are clear for takeoff."

"Affirmative," she radioed back, sending silent thanks to Wade. He was better than the GJ guys. She waited for a few seconds until the roof had opened and then lifted off, hovering for a few seconds to access the coordinates Wade had given her before taking off towards the southeast. She let her mind wander as she flew; the coordinates were preprogrammed and there was little actual flying she had to do. She thought about why Shego might have run away this time, deciding not to dwell on why she was freaked out about it, but only on why Shego had run away. It took about half a second of thought to decide her first hypothesis was correct: Shego was getting cold feet. But why, she asked herself. Inevitably her thoughts turned to the rumination of before and that nagging little voice that was getting harder and harder to ignore. Was it right? Had Shego run away because of her and what had happened between them?

It had been a stupid mistake, though; it hadn't meant a thing to either of them, she protested internally. But then again, here it was four years later and she was still obsessing about it, so maybe Shego was doing the same thing, she admitted reluctantly. Those stupid fucking photographs, she cursed. They were mementos of a time all too brief, but the fleeting time that those photographs served as a reminder for and the even the photographs themselves had caused a turning point in both of their lives.

As hard had she had tried to forget it, she still remembered it as if she was waking up this morning in a room bearing the barest hint of the unique fragrance that was Shego. Shego had been in her room and after a brief inspection of the surroundings, Kim had figured out that Shego had stolen, yet put back, the strip of photographs that showed the two of them as friends. That she would steal something like that intrigued Kim to no end, and as luck would have it, the very next mission she had been sent on involved Shego and Drakken. Nothing had been resolved during the mission; the most they had said to one another was "hi". After the mission had been something else entirely, though.

Shego had come back to her room that night, and amazingly enough, it was to apologize for invading Kim's space and privacy. Kim chuckled as she remembered Shego balancing precariously on that limb outside her room with the guilty version of the puppy dog pout on her face. She had been adorable, a word that Kim had never thought to use with Shego, and Kim had let her in. Shego apologized immediately and Kim had accepted her apology on the condition that Shego tell her why she did it. Shego hemmed and hawed, but eventually admitted that it had been nice being Kim's friend. Kim had laughed and then hugged her gingerly, but instead of the hug being a friendly gesture, it rapidly escalated into kissing, which in turn escalated into touching, which then escalated into a complete lack of both clothing and restraint.

Shego had bailed in the middle of the night after Kim had fallen asleep, and Kim was actually glad for it. Shego's departure had made it easier to classify that night as a dreamy mistake, a weird happenstance that had nothing to do with real life. Even after Shego had turned reluctantly back to the good side, had joined GJ and had become Kim's friend, they never spoke about it, and the silence allowed Kim to almost pretend that it had never happened. It certainly allowed her to pretend that it meant nothing, even though she knew it had, evidenced by the fact that to this day, they had never hugged one another again and avoided all kinds of physical contact in spite of being really good friends.

Her thoughts still in turmoil, Kim sighed as a dilapidated structure in the classic Drakken design emerged on the viewscreen and the hovercraft started to descend. She took over the controls and landed the hovercraft gently on the roof, shutting down the controls and popping the top as the craft landed with a soft thud. She looked for the nearest access point and found a convenient air duct that she pulled the grate off of and used to slide into the building.

Kim found Shego in what used to be the living quarters of the lair, tucked in a small bedroom that obviously used to be hers back when she was Drakken's second and not his future wife. She was reclining on the bed, and her eyes were jumping back and forth between the ceiling and all three of the surrounding walls. Her eyes flicked to Kim as she walked through the door, but then just as quickly flicked back to whatever it was she was looking at. Kim paused briefly, a little unsure of if she was welcome, but she decided to continue walking until she was right beside the bed. She sat down and Shego shifted so that she was closer to Kim, but her eyes remained on the walls. "Found me, huh?" Shego asked, somewhat unnecessarily.

"Yup," Kim answered.

"Wade?" Shego inquired.

"Yup," Kim replied.

"I figured if it had taken this long, the GJ guys Drew have working for him couldn't manage to find me," Shego said.

"Why'd you run away this time?" Kim asked, wanting to see if she knew Shego as well as she thought she did.

"I can't marry him, Princess," Shego said softly.

It seems she did. "Did you really ever think you could?" Kim asked gently.

"Maybe, for a little while, yeah," Shego answered. "But as this damn wedding gets closer and closer, it's becoming more difficult to convince myself that I want to go through with it."

"Why?" Kim asked.

"Because I don't love him and I've never loved him," Shego said bluntly.

"Then why'd you say yes?" Kim asked, perplexed.

Shego sighed. "Long story, Pumpkin," she said, lifting her eyes to the ceiling.

"Enlighten me?" Kim requested.

"Marrying him was the only way to keep what I really wanted but what I thought could never have," Shego explained, her eyes moving to the walls.

Kim looked around curiously, wanting to see what exactly on the walls and ceiling were capturing Shego's attention so thoroughly even in the middle of a potentially life-changing conversation. It looked like strips of something, but they were all too far away for Kim to get a good look at them. She rose from the bed and went to take a look, stopping just inches from the wall. A jolt of something she didn't want to acknowledge shot though her as she realized the strip and all the others like it were strips of those warmly familiar photographs, the same ones that to this day resided on her mirror at home and the ones she had been cursing earlier. She felt Shego's warmth behind her and her presence, usually calming, unnerved Kim considerably. "I didn't think you still had your copy," she lied haltingly, trying to fill the silence in order to quash the anxiety and other sensations that were creeping up her body.

"You had to know that I still have a copy," Shego disagreed, her voice soft, yet deep and tantalizing, her lips incredibly close to Kim's ear as she came closer. "Just like you have to know these are the reason I can't marry Drew."

Kim closed her eyes and she swallowed reflexively as Shego's distinctive scent swirled around her. It was the same scent she had smelled in her room years ago, the one that had told her that Shego had been in her room. It was the same scent she smelled almost daily, but now memories came flooding back that forced her to admit that yes, she did know that Shego still had a copy. "Why do you have so many?" Kim asked, not trusting herself to open her eyes.

"At first, I was just trying to correct an impulsive mistake. Since I joined GJ, I use them to convince myself that being good is worth it if I can be near you," Shego said, her arms sliding past Kim's hips to loosely encircle her waist. "And that if I'm near you, then maybe one day you will get over yourself and realize who you actually want, instead of being with the one you think you should."

Kim's breath caught and her heart, already beating at a breakneck speed, picked up its rhythm even more. Shego was too close, far too close. She needed to get the hell out of here and she needed to do it now, before four years of self-delusion and self-denial were completely lost. She spun around, intent on slipping out of Shego's grasp and heading for the door, but Shego moved closer as she did so, pinning Kim to the wall. Kim looked up, the fraction of an inch more of height that Shego enjoyed over her seeming to be more like feet as Shego lowered her head. Kim felt the unexpectedly gentle kiss on her lips and she cursed herself as her knees started to give out from under her just like some sort of fucking cliché.

That moment of weakness allowed Shego to know that she had an advantage and she used it, tightening her grip and deepening the kiss. Kim knew she should try to resist, but she couldn't, instead yielding to Shego's insistent mouth. She opened her own, and her stomach plummeted as she realized that Shego tasted as sweet as she ever had. A soft moan escaped Kim's lips, and Shego drew back slowly, breaking the kiss and taking in Kim's expression before shifting her right leg forward, nudging Kim's thighs apart with her own thigh and using her hands to cause Kim to come to rest straddling her outstretched leg.

Kim shuddered at the contact, her hands around Shego's neck as she hung on for dear life, her body overcome by sensation and her mind vacillating between desire for the one she wasn't supposed to want and duty to the one she was. Shego started to slide her slowly back and forth, and Kim's breath became ragged. "Please stop," she pleaded softly, her mind and body almost at the breaking point.

Shego's hands stilled but she didn't let Kim go. "Is that what you really want, Princess?" she asked, her soulful green eyes willing Kim to be truthful.

Kim hesitated. If she answered yes, Shego would let her go and she could return to Ron and her perfectly planned life. She would most likely lose Shego as a friend, but it would be an acceptable sacrifice to live her life the way she had always thought she wanted. If she answered no, it meant giving into feelings and desires that she had been holding back for over four years and maybe becoming a person she had never planned to be. A split second and her choice was made. "No," she admitted softly.

Shego didn't say anything, but the brief look of utter joy on her face told Kim what she needed to hear. The look disappeared as Shego took her at her word and she found herself being lifted up and carried toward the bed where, within seconds, deft hands, claws and plasma had rid her of her clothes. She did her own damage to Shego's clothes, rendering her naked in short order, and they lay there for a few seconds savoring the skin-on-skin contact before Shego's ever-inquisitive mouth found its way to her left breast.

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

The clock chimed midnight and jolted Kim out of her reverie. "Oh, for fuck's sake, snap out of it, Possible," she ordered herself irritably. She was a forty-three year old woman getting a fucking divorce, not a naïve twenty-one year old, and the last thing she needed to do was to start obsessing over shit that had happened years ago, even if said shit did have a hand in what was happening now. She got off the couch and went to her bedroom, closing the door grumpily behind her. She got undressed and into her night clothes before flopping down moodily on her bed. She attempted sleep, but sleep would not come. Her mind, even though she ordered it not to, kept slipping back into the past that was now determining her future.


	3. All Cried Out

Chapter 3 – All Cried Out

Kim sighed as she turned over yet again. Fucking Ron and his fucking divorce and his stupid fucking reminder of things she had tried to forget for over twenty years, she thought bitterly. She threw off the covers angrily, swung out of bed and stomped to the kitchen, throwing open the liquor cabinet and grabbing her favorite whiskey. She grabbed a tumbler and filled it about halfway up before setting the bottle back down and replacing the screw cap. She took a sip and the alcohol burned nicely as it slid down her throat. She clutched the tumbler to her chest rather than putting it down and she took it with her into the living room, where she dropped down into her comfortable recliner. "Lights, level two," she requested, and the lights obediently turned on.

She took another sip of whiskey, and quite of its own accord, her mind started to drift back to the recollections that had driven her out of bed. She thought about Shego's tiny bedroom in Drakken's old Caribbean lair, and in spite of herself, she chuckled. After Shego had cornered her in it, she hadn't left it for nearly a week, Shego being so paranoid that Kim was going to bolt that she had been served meals in bed so Kim wouldn't have to leave. Sex had made up a good portion of that week, and Kim would never try to claim otherwise, but they had talked a lot too, and after a couple of days, Shego confessed that her whole disappearance had been a cleverly constructed ruse. She had known at least a couple of months before she had taken off that she wasn't going to marry Drakken; she had run away only so that Kim would follow and she could make one last-ditch effort to seduce, cajole or outright beg Kim into taking real romantic notice of her.

And Wade, the complicit little dick, had been in on it, Kim thought, shaking her head and taking another sip. It hadn't occurred to her at the time that, even as good as Wade was, he should have needed more than an hour to track down someone that GJ hadn't found in two weeks' time. But, as it turned out, Wade hadn't even needed that hour; he knew where Shego was and all he had to do was tell Kim. It also turned out that GJ hadn't been able to find her because Wade had been thwarting them at every step, meaning the GJ guys weren't as inept as they had appeared to be. Even two decades later, she wanted to be pissed at Wade for being such a busybody, but even knowing how everything had turned out, she still couldn't bring herself to be.

Kim shifted in her chair, bringing her legs up to tuck them underneath her. She leaned her head back on the recliner and forced herself to relax, praying for the sleep that she didn't get enough of anyway. It didn't come, but then again, she wasn't really expecting it to; there was far too much crap swirling around her head right now. Kim got up off her chair and padded over to the wall-sized window that afforded her a gorgeous view of the twinkling yet slumbering Middleton. She stared out the window, as the thoughts continued to roll over her.

Coming back from the island had been tough, Kim acknowledged. Shego, now that she had what she truly wanted, had wasted no time calling off the wedding. Drakken had been heartbroken and had taken an extended leave of absence from GJ, which made Kim feel terrible, and then there was Ron, which made Kim feel worse. She couldn't bring herself to tell him, and all that summer, even though the guilt became more and more oppressive as she continuously sneaked out for her assignations with Shego, she remained silent. It wasn't until autumn that her culpability became too much to bear and she was forced to admit to Ron that their relationship was not in the happy place he thought it was.

That confused, pained look in his eyes was painful to see, but the distrust she saw there after she had offered an explanation was far more devastating. She was still too much of a pussy to tell him the truth, so she had mumbled some bullshit about how her new job was going monopolize all her time and she couldn't put him through that and that she just really needed some time on her own to figure some stuff out. She had always been a shitty liar and time hadn't improved that skill, so Ron knew she was lying and she knew that Ron knew she was lying. It wasn't the first time she had lied to him, but it was the first time she had lied when it mattered, and it seemed to make Ron, for the first time ever, lose his faith in her. He didn't say anything when she moved out, and they didn't speak for a long time afterwards.

She moved into her own studio apartment, and it marked the first time she had ever lived on her own. It was a bittersweet time; she reveled in being on her own and was happily infatuated with Shego, but she was also dealing with the loss of Ron and the increased responsibility at work now that she was a real GJ agent. It took a month or so for her to find her balance, but after that, she settled comfortably into her new, more solitary life. It wasn't completely solitary, though, because Shego had been assigned to be her partner at work and often could be found at her apartment when it wasn't work.

Fall slowly faded into winter and both she and Shego had to get used to having a relationship, not an affair. Even as good of friends as they were, they had never spent quite that much time together, and even though they were madly in love, that much togetherness grated on them both after awhile. That irritation would manifest in petty little fights that would last for a couple of days before one or both of them realized how stupid they were being and things got patched up. This pattern repeated itself for awhile, but they got used to one another and the fights became less and less. They pretty much became non-existent, but before things could go from good to perfect, it happened.

Kim blinked, shaking her head slightly to snap it back to the present as she actually started to see what was out the window. There was no way in hell she wanted to relive that memory, so she really needed something to distract her. She gulped down about half of her drink and coughed just a little as the large amount of ethanol burned its way down. "Stereo, play," she said, not sure of what was next in the queue, but hoping it would get her mind off of things. As soon as she heard the opening horn solo, though, she knew she had made a mistake, and when low, melodic voice of Dusty Springfield filled the living room singing of her lost love, Kim slumped back down in the chair, surrendering to the memories she didn't know if she could hold back anyway.

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Kim's Apartment – 21 years ago

Kim sat on her couch, slightly stunned. Shego was down on one knee offering a ring. She hadn't been expecting this, not by a long shot; the prospect of marriage was something for the future, not for the now. Now was just the time for work, Shego and adjusting to true adulthood; now was not for thinking about settling down. She was too shocked to say anything for several moments, and Shego took her silence for the bad tidings it was. "You don't really want to marry me, do you, Princess?" she asked flatly.

"I want to marry you," Kim disagreed, and to Shego's relief, the disagreement was quick in coming, meaning it was sincere. Kim paused as she thought of something else to say. "I really do want to marry you, Shego," she said slowly. "I just don't want to marry you now."

Shego thought about that before slowly getting off her knee. "I can see that," she said reasonably. She slumped on the couch next to Kim, and started to fidget embarrassedly. "I didn't mean to rush you, Pumpkin," she said apologetically. "I just thought as close as we've become that we would probably be moving in together soon and I kinda wanted to make it official."

Kim sighed. "And I can see that," she admitted. She looked down at her hands, not wanting to admit something else.

"What now?" Shego asked apprehensively. "You don't want to move in together," she realized, and Kim's guilty face confirmed her suspicion.

"I'm sorry, Shego," she said softly. "But I just got out on my own and I like it. I don't want to rush back into living with someone else."

"Bullshit," Shego said flatly, her anger rising. "Between all the time we spend together at work and at our respective apartments, we are practically living together already. You just don't want to commit, or at the very least, you don't want to commit to me."

"Yes, I cared so little about you that I destroyed a relationship of five years and a friendship of eighteen years so that I could be with you," Kim snapped.

"But see, you didn't do that for my benefit," Shego shot back. "You did that so you could get out of that commitment and be able to blame me for it."

"I can't believe you just said that," Kim said, her feelings well and truly hurt, even though, deep down, she had to admit there might be a kernel of truth there.

"Well, believe it, Pumpkin, because I just did," Shego taunted viciously. She got up off the couch and went to the front door. Kim watched her rise, and with Shego's every step toward the door, Kim got more and more angry.

"Don't you dare walk out on me!" she demanded. Shego didn't break stride, but continued toward the door, infuriating Kim further. Kim's temper snapped and she leapt off the couch, executed a nice flip and landed in front of Shego, blocking the door. "What gives you the right to judge me?" she asked angrily. "You jilted your fiancé a month before your wedding! A fiancé, I might add, that you had no intention of marrying! And now you ask me to marry you after we've only been together for a few months. How do I know you aren't going to do the same thing to me?"

"Because you were always the one I wanted," Shego fired back. "And I decided a long time ago that if I was ever lucky enough to be with you somehow that I was never going to let you go."

That simple admission caused Kim's anger to dissipate like a puff of so much smoke, and her face softened. "I'm sorry that I am not quite the person you dreamt about, Shego," she said softly. "But that doesn't mean that I don't want to commit to you or to this relationship. It just means that I want a little more time on my own. And when I grow up and realize how stupid I am being, I'll happily marry you and appreciate the fact that I will never have to be alone."

Shego looked at her, and her face went from a scowl to a gentler expression. "You promise?" she asked gruffly.

"I promise, and if you'll let me, I'll wear the ring you wanted to give me," Kim offered. "It will just be a promise ring instead of an engagement ring."

Shego thought about that. "I guess I can live with that," she said reluctantly. She took out the titanium and diamond band from the box she had hastily shoved into her pocket and placed it on Kim's finger.

"Thank you," Kim said, putting her arms around Shego and kissing her. "You won't have to wait long and then we will have our whole lives together."

"We'd better," Shego warned. Without letting go of Kim, she turned to go back to the couch, but paused as Kim's GJ COM-link screen let out a soft chime. "Uh-oh," she said. "It's the boss lady calling."

Kim checked the message identification. "So it is; yay," she said sarcastically, flipping it on.

"Agent Possible, we have a situation. Where the hell is your partner?" Dr. Director barked.

"Right here," Shego interjected.

Dr. Director's eyebrow rose, but she said nothing. What her agents did on their private time was really none of her business. "Good, if you're together, it'll make this easier," she said shortly. "We have an agent undercover in the Hyperkinetic syndicate and from our last communication with him, it's gone bad. We need you two to infiltrate and get him out of there. Get to HQ as quickly as you can; your hovercraft will be waiting when you get here."

"Yes, ma'am," Kim said respectfully and Dr. Director cut off the transmission.

Shego scowled. "Yeah, this is exactly how I wanted to spend my evening," she groused.

"You mean you were going to stay?" Kim asked, surprised, figuring that even though things seemed okay, Shego might still be upset about what had transpired that evening.

"Sure, doy," Shego shrugged. "Why would I leave?"

"Because I rejected your marriage proposal and horribly offended you?" Kim offered.

"Well, yeah, but technically you didn't reject it, you postponed it, and with the other I gave as good as I got," Shego pointed out. She smiled, and there was a feral, lusty quality to it that made Kim shiver as Shego's arms circled around her. "Besides, when we fight, I always get awesome makeup sex."

"Later," Kim promised, shaking her head and marveling how sex seemed to fix even the direst of their problems and the worst of their fights.

They grabbed their helmets and Kim's motorbike from the garage and zoomed to GJ. The trip was short; Kim only lived a few minutes away just so she could get there quickly if she needed to. They parked in the employee garage and went upstairs. Dr. Director handed them a file and they examined its contents as they went to the aircraft hangar. "So what the hell is the Hyperkinetic syndicate?" Shego asked as they strode down the hallway.

Kim looked at the printout. "Let's see, it was founded by some guy who calls himself Hyperkinetic about two years ago, and within the last year or so, it has become a major player on the international crime scene."

"He calls himself 'Hyperkinetic'? What kind of dumb-shit, wannabe superhero name is that?" Shego asked disdainfully.

"His real name is Michael Reauxwaive," Kim said. "The 'Hyperkinetic' seems to stem from some kind of molecular excitation superpower that he has."

"It's still a stupid name, even if he does have powers," Shego insisted.

Kim rolled her eyes. She was already in trouble, so she didn't really need to point out that some people might consider "Shego" stupid. "Here's ours; let's go," she said, indicating the hovercraft on her left. Shego nodded and keyed in the code, prompting the gangplank to unfold. They boarded, got clearance and took off. The coordinates Dr. Director gave them pointed them due north towards the Arctic Circle, and Kim noted that cold weather gear had been provided for them in the hovercraft. The flight was inconsequential and they arrived at their destination with no problems, a fact that pleased them because they were trying to infiltrate a large criminal organization with which they had no prior experience.

They sat in the hovercraft for a few minutes reading the file before they disembarked. The lair was underground, no big shock considering how cold it was out there, and the access point was a hidden cave about 500 meters from where they had landed. According to the report, it wasn't guarded, but it was under surveillance, so they were going to have to find, disable and re-route the camera before they could attempt to enter.

Kim put down the file and nodded at Shego. Shego nodded back and the plan was set. After putting on their cold suits, they disembarked and crept toward the cave, keeping low and using their white suits to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Shego, with her many years' experience as a thief, spotted the decently, but not perfectly hidden camera within seconds and almost as quickly had taken it out. Kim, as quickly as she could, hooked it up to a handheld transmission device that would give whoever was looking at the screen on the inside a bogus snowswept picture to look at. With that in place, Shego accessed the door panel, pushed in the access code they had been given and the door obediently swung open.

The hallway was deserted, and it was as hot as a sauna in there, so they quickly shed their snowsuits. They hung them up on some hooks by the door that looked like they were there for just that purpose and grabbed what looked to be henchman jumpsuits off the same set of hooks. They put them on and strolled down the hallway trying to look as though they belonged there while surreptitiously checking the signal for the tracking device their endangered agent was wearing. Of course he was tucked in the way, way back of the lair, and it took them a while to make it back there without drawing suspicion to themselves. The door was locked and Shego went to work on the control panel, cracking a smirk as the door slid open. After a quick look around just to make sure it was safe, the two of them slipped through the doorway, walking quickly to the agent that was shackled on the far wall.

"How nice of you to join us, Agents Possible and Go," a voice said. Kim and Shego stopped dead in their tracks as the lights brightened and a man in a garish orange suit appeared in front of the now-closed door.

"I knew it was going too well," Shego muttered.

"Really, I'm flattered," the presumed Hyperkinetic said. "I had no idea that GJ would send two of their finest to try to stop me."

"We aren't trying to stop you, you egomaniacal asshole," Shego said dismissively, trying to forestall the villain-patented evil plan explanation. "We're here to get him," she said, indicating the other GJ agent. She took a look around, spotted the control panel that looked like it should be operating his energy-based shackles and sent a plasma blast towards it. The panel exploded in a shower of sparks, and the shackles deactivated. Shego smirked. "And now that we have him, we are getting the fuck out of here," she said, grabbing the mole's arm and pushing him towards the door.

"That traitor is not leaving here alive," Hyperkinetic spat. "I don't care if he is my kid brother. No one betrays Hyperkinetic!"

"Family drama. Yippie," Shego said sarcastically. "First off, dickwad, I really hate it when people refer to themselves in the 3rd person, and second, I don't care if he stole your puppy and your mother loved him more; he's a GJ agent and he is coming with us." She moved in front of the agent she was protecting, almost daring Hyperkinetic to do something.

Hyperkinetic scowled and put his hands together, causing sparks to come out of his fingers and congregate in the space between his hands. "Fine," he said. "Then you both die." He hurled the energy ball toward them and Shego pushed her fellow agent to the floor as she flipped out of his way. While he was distracted, Kim took the opportunity to kick Hyperkinetic's legs out from under him and throw him into the wall. Shego chuckled as Hyperkinetic went in head first and fell on the floor unconscious.

"Come on, kid," she said, hauling the other agent to his feet. He nodded. She looked at Kim who also nodded. Shego paused to let the other two go ahead of her and to make sure that Hyperkinetic was out of commission. He was, and satisfied, she pivoted to follow the others out the door.

It was Shego's gasp of pain that alerted Kim to the fact that something was wrong. She turned and Shego collapsed into her arms. She looked into room and saw Hyperkinetic standing with a triumphant smile on his face. Ignoring him, she looked down at Shego, and her chest constricted when she saw the look of utter agony on that beautiful face. Kim lowered Shego to the ground as gently as she could, and tore open her uniform trying to look for the injury so she could attempt to treat it. She gasped as she peeled back fabric to reveal badly burned and blistered skin over all of Shego's body.

Shego opened her eyes, and they looked at Kim in apology. "I made a stupid mistake and turned my back, Princess," she apologized. "And the bastard managed to nail me."

"It's okay," Kim said, trying to soothe her. "We just need to get you back to HQ and its medical ward."

"I'm not going to make it back to HQ, Pumpkin," Shego said softly, her eyes closing in pain once more. "His power did something to mine and I'm burning from the inside out. There isn't any way for you, them or anybody to stop it."

Kim forced herself to remain calm. There was no way that Shego could be telling her what she thought Shego was telling her. "You are not going to die on me, Shego!" she said fiercely. "We'll get you back and you'll be fine."

Shego opened her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Princess," she whispered. "I love you." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She expelled it and her body went limp.

Kim's thoughts were a jumble of panic and disbelief. This was Shego; there was no way she should have been taken down so easily. There could be no way that she would leave her this easily. "Don't leave me, Shego," she begged softly as tears started to roll down her cheeks. "You can't leave me."

Hyperkinetic laughed manically from where he was standing over Kim. "Oh, how touching, the big, bad GJ agent is mourning her partner," he sneered. He looked around, excessively self-satisfied. "And now it looks like it's my lucky day, not only do I get to kill a GJ traitor, I get to take out their best agents while I am at it. And, confidentially, if you're the best they've got, I'll be taking over the world sooner rather than later," he said snidely as he raised his hands to collect more energy.

Kim looked at her beautiful Shego, her pale skin darkened by the burns. Shego should not have gone out like this, Kim decided; she was too good of a fighter and too proud of a person to be taken out by a lucky cheap shot from some batshit-crazy, supervillain wannabe. Kim felt rage, pure and unbridled, rampage through her, and she welcomed its strengthening onslaught. She would grieve for Shego, probably for the rest of her life, but her rage told her now was not the time for grief. Now was the time to act.

She kissed Shego tenderly on the forehead before gently laying her on the floor. She rose slowly, her eyes narrowing as she watched Hyperkinetic gather strength. She watched as he laughed, confident in his own success. She watched as he sent a killing blow her way and watched as his face grew stunned at her easy evasion of it. She advanced, and watched as he panicked as he tried to conjure up more of his power only to have it balk due to his duress. She watched his panic turn to terror as she came closer, watched as his eyes and voice pleaded for mercy and for his life, watched as she broke his neck with one blow, and finally watched as his lifeless body crumpled to the ground. She turned her back on him then and walked proudly back to her fallen partner. As gently and as respectfully as she could, she put Shego's body on her shoulders, straightening her back and squaring her shoulders. The door slid open, and she walked out into the hallway and back to the hovercraft, her pride and her rage scattering any who dared to stand in her path.

They flew in silence back to GJ headquarters; Kim had no interest in speaking and the agent she had rescued was too terrified to speak and wouldn't have known what to say anyway. As soon as they had landed, Kim gathered up Shego once more, nodded to the other agent and disembarked, carrying Shego all of the way to the medical ward. Shego was still warm, and it gave Kim hope that there might be a way to save her. The medical team went into action as soon as she got there, and she waited quietly outside. It wasn't long, five minutes, maybe, before the medical officer came out.

"I'm sorry, Agent Possible," she said regretfully, sitting in the chair beside Kim. "But there was nothing we could do."

Kim pursed her lips, but otherwise gave no outward indication of her devastation. "I see," she said, her face neutral and her voice flat and emotionless. "Thank you for trying." She got up from her chair and made her way towards the door, only to be blocked by Dr. Director. "My office, now, Possible," she said gently but firmly.

"No," Kim stated calmly, her eyes looking for a way to get around Dr. Director without hurting her.

Dr. Director's features softened. "Listen, Kim," she said quietly. "I know what she meant to you. I just want to talk, that's all."

"I don't feel like talking," Kim said flatly. Not caring a whit about insubordination, she brushed Dr. Director aside and left the medical ward. She went back to their office, gathered up her helmet and her keys, retrieved her bike from the employee garage and just took off. She had no idea where she was going, had no idea what she was going to do. She just really needed to be alone.

She rode for miles until she came to the highest bridge in the state. She parked her bike on the shoulder and stared down in to the cold dark water that looked surprisingly warm and alluring. She pondered jumping, and quickly realized that would make her death as stupid and pointless as Shego's, but she really didn't care. All she could think about was the promise around her finger she was never going to keep. She continued to stare into the water, and she started thinking about her family, Ron, Wade, Monique and all of the other people whose tragedy she would only add to if they had to mourn both her and Shego. Those thoughts brought her back to herself, at least a little, and she hopped down off the bridge, put on her helmet and turned her bike towards home.

She parked in her garage and took the elevator up, her thoughts still going in a million different directions and the tears refusing to come. The elevator doors parted and Kim was astonished to see Ron standing in front of her apartment door. "Dr. Director got a hold of Wade and Wade called me," he explained simply. She came closer and he held out his arms. Kim hesitated for the briefest of seconds before burying herself in his comforting embrace, and with his warm steadiness around her, she finally broke down.

"She's gone," she choked out as the sobs came, her whole body shaking from the release of her despair.

"Shh. I know," Ron said, holding her tight and rocking her gently back and forth. He let her cry, and after a few minutes, he let her go just long enough to grab the apartment keys out of her hand. He let them both in and guided Kim to the couch. Kim didn't let go, but continued to cling to him and together they sat on the couch while Kim continued to sob and Ron tried to comfort her as best he could.

He hadn't known what to feel when Wade had called. It had hurt him deeply when Kim had walked out, and when that call had come, there was still more than a little bitterness in his heart towards her. That bitterness had dissipated the moment he had seen her face and he knew how badly she needed him. It didn't matter anymore that she had walked out on him, didn't matter that she had sacrificed what they'd had together, and it didn't even matter that she had done all that because she was in love with someone else. She was his best friend, his KP, and he was going to be there for her, even if she hadn't been for him. So, knowing he was right, he stayed and didn't leave until the morning, letting Kim use him for whatever purpose she saw fit.

Kim lost track of how long she cried, but after a while, there were no more tears. She simply had nothing else to give. In that moment, she dried her eyes and made a choice: she had decided that she wanted to live, so she had to live. She couldn't live in a constant state of grief for the one she had lost. Life went on and so would she; her past would remain just that, her past. She would give herself this one night to grieve, and then she had to move on. "Will you stay with me tonight, Ron?" she asked, not wanting to be alone.

"Of course, Kim," Ron responded, drawing her closer.

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

The clock chimed three and Kim started back to the present. She wiped her cheeks, half-expecting there to be tears there, but Kim had made her choice a long time ago and twenty years of resolve and conditioning were hard to undo. Besides, why should she cry now? She hadn't even cried at Shego's funeral.

Her funeral, now that had been a fucked up disaster. The entirely of GJ had been there, along with Team Go, Drakken, her own parents and all of the reformed and not-so-reformed supervillains of the world who had come to pay their last respects. The church was packed, the press was smothering and the entire time Kim felt like she wanted to throw up. Through it all, though, Ron had been her rock and over the next few weeks, he maintained his steadfast devotion, a solicitousness that would strengthen when Kim discovered two months later that she was pregnant.


	4. Chained to a Memory

Chapter 4 – Chained to a Memory

Kim's Apartment – 21 years in the past

Kim rested her chin on the edge of the toilet, willing her stomach to stop churning. This was the third time this week that she had thrown up right after she had gotten out of bed. She had never been prone to illness, so this extended nausea was unique and worrisome. She debated whether to ignore it as she had done for the past few days or to see someone about it. She sighed and gingerly got up off the floor as not to rile up her already sensitive digestive tract. She swished some water around to get rid of the awful taste before she went to phone her mother for an appointment and Dr. Director for the day off.

She returned to the bathroom, grabbed a shower and got dressed, all the while primed to dash back to the bathroom if the need arose. Nothing happened, so she went down to garage, eschewing her bike in favor of her more sedate car. She drove to the hospital, parked and went inside. Used to her presence, the nurse on duty waved her through, and she went directly to her mom's office, waiting there until her mom got done with her responsibilities and could stop by for their prearranged meeting.

Ann Possible looked at her oldest speculatively as she came in, and she broke out into a knowing, yet slightly puzzled smirk when she saw Kim had managed to fall asleep on the couch in the short amount of time she had been waiting for her. She grabbed one of her desk chairs and pulled it over to the couch, seating herself in it before gently shaking Kim awake. "Kim, honey, I'm here now," she said softly.

Kim woke up, slightly disoriented. "Oh, hey, Mom," she said, blinking and sitting up. "I really didn't mean to drift off like that but I guess I must have."

Ann's eyebrow rose. "Have you been falling asleep like this a lot?" she asked, switching to clinician mode.

Kim thought about it. "I have been getting really tired in the afternoon," she admitted, thinking about her pattern of behavior over the past few days.

Ann jotted something down on her pad. "How's your appetite been?" she asked.

"Fine, I guess," Kim shrugged. "I've been throwing everything up lately so it has made me a little leery of eating."

"Understandable," her mother said, writing something else down. "And when was the date of your last period?"

Kim frowned. That was an unexpectedly tough question. She thought about it for a while, but couldn't come up with anything; she wasn't all that great at tracking them anyway, and life had been too demanding for her to think about something so trivial. "I don't know," she said at last.

Her mother's brow contracted. "With as vague as your symptoms are, there could be a number of things clinically wrong with you. There are a few 'easy' explanations of your symptoms, but I am hesitant to diagnose the most obvious of them in your case," Ann said, looking at Kim with concern. "I want to order a full blood workup and if that doesn't tell me what I want to know, then we might have to look into other types of tests and treatment."

"What're the easy diagnoses?" Kim asked hesitantly, not liking the look her mother was giving her.

"Well, if you were anyone but my kid whose circumstances in life I know, I would say you were pregnant," Ann said matter-of-factly. "But, knowing what I know, it seems more reasonable that it is either food poisoning or that you are depressed."

Kim had only heard one thing, and it caused her to stare at her mother with a look that was equal parts shock, confusion and horror. It took several minutes before she was able to talk, and even then, she opened her mouth but nothing came out. She let out a short breath, gathered her wits and then finally said something. "I can't be pregnant, Mom," she insisted.

"I know; that's why I said we were going to have to go with the blood workup," Ann said. "It will show if you've recently had an infection or any other abnormalities that could point to something that I haven't thought of. If it doesn't show anything, though, Kim, due to everything that you have been through lately, your symptoms might be psychosomatic." Kim glared at her, offended. "Don't give me that, Kim," her mother said sternly, dismissing her glare. "Everyone has the right to be depressed when someone they love is tragically taken from them. Just because you refuse to admit that you could possibly be depressed doesn't mean that you aren't." Ann went to her desk, picked up the phone and dialed an extension. She exchanged some information with the person on the other end and then hung up. "They are expecting you at the phlebotomy lab. Go get your blood drawn, go home and try to get some rest; the results should be back by late tomorrow and I will call as soon as they come in," she said, returning to her chair. She brushed the hair out of Kim's eyes. "We'll get you better, sweetie, I promise."

Kim smiled. "Thanks, Mom," she said gratefully, her temper subsiding at her mom's concern. She got off the couch and left the office, waving goodbye to her mom before making her way down to the lab. They drew several vials of her blood and then, per her mother's advice, she went home and went back to bed. She woke up once to use the facilities and take a swing around the kitchen with half a thought towards food, but her stomach turned and she thought better of that idea. She went back to bed and didn't wake up until the morning when she found herself running to the bathroom to throw up again. She called Dr. Director and took another sick day, waiting for her mother's call. She flipped on some meaningless television and was sitting there half watching it, half dozing off when her doorbell rang. Surprised, she got up off the couch to answer it and opened the door to find her mother.

"Hey Mom," she said, still surprised. "I thought you were going to call."

"Some of your test results came back," her mom said as she came in and took off her coat. "And I thought it would be better if I told you in person."

"Told me what?" Kim asked tentatively.

"You are pregnant," her mother informed her, sitting down.

Kim sat down on her couch, dumbfounded. "But I can't be pregnant!" she protested, her mind trying to come up with some logical explanation but finding none; there was just no possible way for her to be pregnant. Unless, it had happened that night, she thought as a flash of inspiration came. But it couldn't be, she argued with herself internally; the odds of it happening were impossible, and Shego's death had devastated her emotionally and physically. If this baby had been conceived then, Kim could scarcely believe she hadn't miscarried. "Is the lab sure of the results?" Kim asked quietly.

Kim had figured something out, Ann realized. "The test has a false-positive rate of less than 0.01," she answered. Kim nodded. "Do you know who the father is?" Ann asked gently, knowing there was something Kim wasn't telling if she'd just lost her girlfriend and she now found herself pregnant. Kim nodded.

"There is only one person it could be," she admitted.

"Are you going to tell him?" Ann inquired further.

"I can't," Kim said quietly.

"Are you keeping it?" Ann asked hesitantly.

Kim placed a hand on her still-flat belly and sighed. "It's not her fault that she was completely unexpected," she said. "And if she's tough enough to have lived these last couple of months with me, she deserves a chance to be born."

"She?" Ann asked quizzically.

Kim smiled just a little, the first time she had smiled in a long while. "Just a feeling," she admitted.

It turned out that her feeling had been exactly right, as she and Ron found out when she went for her first sonogram four months later. "Do you want to know what it is?" the technician asked as Kim and Ron stared at the screen trying to make sense of what they were seeing.

"Yes," Kim said promptly.

"Congratulations, it's a girl," the technician replied, outlining the head, the hands, the feet and the lack of a certain appendage.

Kim smiled. "I knew it was a girl," she said proudly. The technician printed out a copy and handed it to her.

"You can get dressed now," she said cheerfully. "You should schedule an appointment with your doctor to go over the official results."

She left the room, and Ron came over to look at the picture. "She's beautiful, KP," he said. He gave Kim a quick kiss on the head before exiting.

Kim looked after him and smiled sadly. Ron was being so completely wonderful about all this in spite of the fact it was completely unexpected and she had been less than eloquent when she had broke the news. She hadn't planned on telling him, but somehow it had just slipped out. Ron had looked stunned, looked at her midsection and after a few seconds' thought, asked Kim to marry him. She told him no, thinking it was just gallantry that was doing the asking, but over these last few months, the proposals repeated themselves in a quiet, unassuming way that told Kim that Ron was serious. She didn't want to marry him, though, and she reiterated that fact every time he asked. However, that hadn't stopped him from asking, Kim thought wryly as she put her clothes back on.

Infrequent marriage proposals aside, Kim found herself grateful for his presence as her delivery date neared. She had missed him when they weren't friends, and being back together with him, especially now that there was, for her at least, no romantic component to it, made it seem like old times. That was why it was unsurprising that when the time came to go to the hospital, Ron was the one that drove her and the one that was nervously waiting with her family for news of the newest addition to the Possible family.

"You can come in and see them now," Ann Possible told them, poking her head into the room and startling them all. They all jumped up and crowded into Kim's room, all of them jostling for position and smiling when they saw the pink-wrapped bundle in Kim's arms.

"What's her name, Kim?" Jim asked.

"Anne Jaime Possible," Kim answered, causing her mother and father to smirk with pride.

"Can I hold her?" both of her brothers asked at once.

"Just for a little bit," their mother told them. "Everyone gets to hold her for a few moments and then everyone has to leave so Kim can get some rest." Kim's dad called seniority rights and held her first, counting all the toes and fingers before handing her off to Kim's brothers. They held her gingerly, afraid they would break her, and quickly passed her off to Ron. Ron took her and stood there transfixed as she blinked and her blue-green eyes became visible for the first time. He smiled as she yawned and then handed her back off to Kim. Mindful of Dr. Possible's glare, they all said goodbye and left the room, leaving Kim and Anne alone.

Kim went home from the hospital two days later and spent the next three months getting used to life as a mother. It wasn't easy, but Kim was happy in spite of the lack of sleep, the dirty diapers, the baby upchuck and all of the other things that came with motherhood. Anne was the most perfect baby who had ever lived, or so Kim thought, and she had Kim wrapped around her newborn finger in no time. Kim marveled at the soft red strands that started to appear on her head and the way the blue faded from her eyes to leave them vibrantly green. She treasured the times that Anne would fall asleep on her chest, her face so peaceful and her breathing so quiet that she almost appeared like a doll. Most of all though, she just loved being with her daughter, and her three months of maternity leave ended far too quickly, leaving Kim the unwanted tasks of going back to work and putting Anne in GJ's childcare program. She was depressed about it and decided she could use some company, so she invited Ron over the night before she was scheduled to go back to work.

"Aw, come on, KP," Ron said, expertly balancing Anne and her bottle in one arm while feeding himself pizza with the other. "How bad can it be? GJ's a world-class institution and I'm sure they have child care to match."

"I'm sure they do, Ron, but that's not the point," Kim said, reclaiming her seemingly precariously-balanced infant now that she was done with dinner. "The point is that I don't want to leave Anne with someone I don't really know. I would be having a hard enough time leaving her with someone like you or my mom, but leaving her with a total stranger is just completely freaking me out."

Ron looked thoughtful at her last statement. "You would leave her with me?" he asked, a half-baked idea forming in his mind.

"Of course," Kim said dismissively. "She loves you and you take good care of her."

Ron grinned. "Then I have your solution, KP," he announced cheerfully. "I'll become your manny."

"My what?" Kim asked.

"Your man-nanny," Ron explained.

"Um, Ron, you have a full-time job already," Kim pointed out, perplexed.

"Well, sure, but you work weird hours at GJ, so our schedules probably don't overlap," Ron reasoned. "And besides, I could probably do most of my work from home; I would just need to go in from time to time for meetings and stuff."

"And they just let employees randomly decide that they don't want to come into the office anymore," Kim said skeptically.

"Well, kinda," Ron answered. "Smarty Mart is under real pressure to be more environmentally conscientious, so they have to offer the work-at-home option. It's available to all administrative and executive staff who meet seniority prerequisites. I've been working there for over five years, KP, so I meet the limit, and they like my work well enough that they should be willing to let me try it."

"But your career could be in jeopardy if you suddenly decide you only want to telecommute," Kim objected. "I'm not going to let you do that just because I don't want to put my kid into daycare."

"But she's not just your kid," Ron said pointedly. "And I would like to do this for the both of you."

Kim looked at him. It was a very tempting offer, but it wasn't fair to Ron. "I really appreciate the offer, Ron," she said sincerely. "But I can't let you do that."

"Fair enough," Ron shrugged. He tugged out his cell phone and flipped it open. He dialed a number and listened intently as it rang for a few seconds before a mechanical voice gave him a list of options. He punched in a few numbers and waited some more before a human voice came on the other end. "Hey Artie," he said pleasantly, and Kim grew instantly alarmed. Artie, if this was Smarty Mart he was calling and it was who she was thinking of, was his direct supervisor. "This is Ron. I need to schedule a meeting with you for tomorrow some time. I'll be in the office at nine, and anytime you would have available would be great. I'll see you tomorrow." He cut off the call and looked at Kim, his mild expression never changing. "Well, it seems you have a decision to make, KP," he said conversationally. "I'm meeting with my boss tomorrow so I can tell him one of two things: a) that I want to try the work-at-home option or b) that I am giving my two weeks' notice so that I can pursue a different career path."

So Ron was apparently serious about being Anne's caregiver, Kim noted. That didn't mean she was going to be extorted into disregarding what was best for Ron. "You are not going to quit your job at the Smarty Mart," Kim said flatly. "I won't let you."

"And how exactly are you going to stop me, Miss Big Bad Superspy?" Ron taunted. "I'm a growed-up adult."

"With awesome grammar skills apparently," Kim said dismissively. Ron grinned. Kim looked at Anne and looked at Ron, and against her better judgment made her choice. "All right," she said reluctantly. "We'll try it for six months, but then I'll put her in daycare."

Ron beamed and gently took Anne from Kim. "We're going to get into as much trouble as we can, Annie," he promised, and Anne giggled at him.

"That's what I'm afraid of," Kim sighed.

Six months passed, and in spite of Ron's promise to Anne, he was an amazing caregiver and they got into no trouble whatsoever. Because of his fine work record and his personal association with Martin Smarty, Ron was easily able to readjust his work schedule and, contrary to Kim's trepidation, it caused no harm to his standing at work or his career. He and Anne went on all sorts of little adventures in Middleton, like running errands for Kim, going to infant exercise classes, or most likely, stopping by the store to pick up something for Ron to cook. More often than not, Kim would come home and some sort of hot food would be on the table appropriate to the time of day she found herself coming home.

The whole situation was becoming unnervingly domestic, and Kim was unsurprised when, at the end of the six-month trial period, Ron proposed again for the first time since Anne had been born. She wanted to say no; the specter of Shego still haunted her and she was really unsure of whether she wanted to get back into a permanent relationship. But Anne loved Ron, and even though Kim knew she might not ever love him as much as she had loved Shego or as much as he loved her, she cared for him as well. The question was did she care enough to marry him, and after a particularly tough day in which she came home to a happy baby and a pair of warm, supportive arms, she decided that yes, she really did care that much and this was something she wanted to continue.

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Kim shifted in her chair and took another sip of her whiskey, a small smile coming to her face as she remembered their wedding. They got married about six months later, and the newly-walking Anne, with a little help from her namesake, was their flower-girl. It wasn't the storybook wedding that Kim had always thought she would have, but her life hadn't exactly turned out like a fairy tale either, she thought wryly. It had been a small ceremony held in her parents' backyard, with just a smattering of their closest friends. Monique had been her matron of honor and her little boy Ernie had been the ring bearer. Ernie was about the same age as Anne, so he, like she, had to be assisted in his official duties. In his case his daddy Wade was the one to offer assistance and the sight of the two of them toddling down the aisle together was one of Kim's favorite memories.

She put the tumbler down and rested her head on the back of the chair. As she started to doze, the memories continued to wash over her. After the wedding, life had settled down into a peaceful domestic complacency for about three years. Then the boys had come along and peace was a thing of the past. Kim loved Sean and Jon with all of her heart, but her twin boys, much like their Uncle Tweebs before them, were a handful. They weren't bad boys; they were just rambunctious, but luckily, Kim and Ron both had a lot of experience with rambunctious and their boys grew into spirited, but not unruly, little boys.

It was when the boys had started school that the years had really started to fly by. Ron became a soccer dad, shuttling the kids to and from school and all of their various other activities, and ironically, though he put his family first, his career thrived. By being a domestic dad, he had turned into Smarty Mart's target demographic, and this made him a genius in the marketing of their products. He knew what stay-at-home parents like himself were looking for and he could tell his employer exactly how to sell it to them. He had success after success and by the time the boys were in high school, it had netted him the title of Vice President in Charge of Marketing.

Kim, too, had success in her career and was now Director of GJ, a position she had been carefully groomed for under the tutelage of Dr. Director. In spite of the long hours away from her family, she loved the work. She loved bringing career criminals to justice; she loved keeping the world safe from all the wackos who wanted to harm innocent people and being completely candid, she liked being in charge of it all. Being in charge of that large of an organization was a commitment, though, and as the kids got older, she found herself spending more and more time at work. In spite of what Ron seemed to think, however, she didn't spend more time at work because she loved work more. She had responsibilities that she had to take care of or people would die. She thought Ron understood and accepted that, but apparently he didn't.

Her eyes popped open and she scowled. Fucking Ron, she thought. If she hadn't known it was would devastate the kids, she would order her best assassin to take him out. What the hell was his problem anyway, she thought in exasperation. Their lives had been a happy routine for so many years; why was he picking now to go and fuck it all up? She got up and went to glare out the window. It was the boys going off to college, she hypothesized. Come September they would have an empty house, and maybe Ron had waited so the kids wouldn't be as affected when they split up.

"But why would he be so unhappy?" Kim asked herself. He had a good job, a decent marriage and awesome kids; he had no reason to complain. She stared out the window pensively and her anger subsided. Maybe Ron had a point, she conceded as she put her anger aside and she started to think logically. She did spend a lot of time away from home, and some of those nights at the office probably weren't exactly spent solving life and death situations involving international security. They were probably important at the time, but they could have waited until the day after, and she should have gone home. So, fine, maybe Ron was partially right about that one, but it didn't warrant his divorce declaration.

She thought of something else and sighed. Maybe this wasn't all about her regularly coming home late. Maybe it had more to with the person she had spent most the night thinking about, the person who still wasn't Ron even though he was the one who had asked for a divorce. Maybe after twenty years of being the dutiful husband while his wife was not-so-secretly in love with someone else had finally gotten on his nerves, and with the kids gone he could do something about it.

Kim winced at that withering self-generated appraisal of Ron's motivation. It wasn't that bad for him, was it? She was tempted to say "no," but then his "The only time in this entire relationship I can ever remember feeling joy is when the kids were born" comment came back into her recollection. So maybe it was that bad for him and thinking about it, she had to admit she could see why. He'd had a crush on her for years before she'd even considered him and she had done that on the rebound. He'd said "I love you"; she'd said "I think I love you. He'd loved her whole-heartedly and she'd left him for someone else. He'd done a fabulous job of taking care of her and the kids, and she'd repaid him by appearing to love her job more than she loved him. And, as he pointed out, she never loved him as much as he loved her. Even now, all these years later, she couldn't honestly say that she was in love with him even though she loved him wholeheartedly. Her soul still belonged to Shego and now it was causing her marriage to go up in flames.

But, in spite of the current situation, she found she couldn't feel guilty about falling in love with Shego. Those months with Shego had been some of the happiest times in her life, and without Shego, none of her children would exist. If she hadn't been with Shego, Kim would never have gone off birth control and Anne would have never been conceived. No Anne and there might never have been a Sean and a Jon, because Anne was a big motivating factor in getting married to Ron in the first place.

The clock chimed five and Kim looked towards it in surprise. Well, fuck, she thought; the only things she had accomplished tonight were getting pissed, getting aroused, and getting depressed and now she had to get ready for work. Today was going to be fabulous, she could just feel it.


	5. Rainy Days and Mondays

Chapter 5 – Rainy Days and Mondays

GJ Headquarters – Monday Morning

Two rookie GJ officers sat a table in the GJ foyer watching the rain come down as they talked animatedly about what their potential section assignments might be. After 3 years of interning during the summers of their college years and spending the last three months getting trained as officers, they were both excited to find out what their official assignment in the organization would be. One stopped talking as Kim stomped her way in through the front door. He also took note of the demeanor and alerted his compatriot. "Uh-oh," he said. "I would stay out of the boss lady's way today."

"Really? Why?" his companion asked, turning to look.

"Because she looks disheveled, tired and utterly pissed off," Ernie stated.

Anne looked at her mother a little more closely and found that Ernie was right. Ma did look utterly pissed off, and that was unusual for her always businesslike-at-work mother. "I wonder what's up," she wondered.

"Well, you're probably the only one in the whole place that can ask her without getting yelled at, fired or demoted," Ernie reminded her.

"Point taken, Jiminy," Anne said wryly. "I'll go talk to her." Ernie walked away, and she shook her head, chuckling as she heard the strains of "When You Wish upon a Star" coming from his general direction. It was an old exchange; Ernie tended to be more thoughtful than she was and he was constantly prodding her into improving. In return, she maturely called him "Jiminy" or "Jim."

Kim, lost her in foul mood, only noted the presence of her offspring when she saw Ernie walking away from Anne towards the labs. He smiled and waved as he went past, and in spite of her demeanor, she smiled and waved back. Ernie had such a sunny disposition that it was tough to scowl at him. She had known him since birth and he had been Anne's best friend since the time they had both toddled down the aisle at her wedding. He had always been cheerful and incredibly sweet and Kim considered him to be another one of her kids. He was at her house so much while he was growing up he might as well have been and Kim knew Monique felt the same way about Anne.

She watched as Ernie shot another glance towards Anne, causing her daughter to roll her eyes, sigh and get up from where she was sitting. If Kim didn't know better, she would swear they were either a couple or destined to be one. But she did know better and knew that such thoughts were idle fancy. Much like she and Ron, it had been in high school that the platonic best friends that might be something more thing had come to a crux, with everyone assuming that now that hormones and sexuality were involved the friendship as an entity could not continue as just friendship. Anne and Ernie thought everyone was nuts, and they had no problems telling them so. No one believed them, though, until Ernie and Anne made a scene at the junior prom by coming with a girl and a guy, respectively, before quite obviously switching dates. It had been mostly show on Anne's part; she had dated a few women here and there, but most of her steadies were guys. She was just trying to make a point. Kim shook her head at the memory. Anne had what Nana Possible called "gumption", that was for damn sure. Even if the opportunity had presented itself, she couldn't visualize herself taking Shego to any kind of school dance.

Anne approached her mother warily now that she realized she was the object of her attention. If Ma was in as bad of a mood as she appeared to be, Anne really didn't want to do anything to provoke her. "Hey Ma," she said cautiously. Her mother fixed her with an admonishing glare and Anne winced, realizing she had already screwed up. "Um, good morning, Madame Director," she said hastily, knowing that one stipulation of her employment with GJ was that she was supposed to act like any other agent even though her mother was its director.

"Agent Possible, good; I need to see you immediately in my office," Kim said crisply. Anne's eyebrows rose, but she did as she was told although her instincts told her to run. She could tell that her mother was not just pissed off; she was homicidally pissed off and was so for a very specific and likely very serious reason. She followed her mother meekly to her large central office and gingerly sat down in one of the visitor's chairs while her mom put her stuff down and sat in the large chair behind her desk. Her mother didn't speak, but looked at her with an odd, half-angry, half-sad expression that made Anne uncomfortable and prompted her to speak.

"What is it, Ma?" she asked, concerned, not caring about the rules now they were in the privacy of Kim's office.

Kim sighed. Anne needed to know, but damn was it hard getting the words out. "Anne, I don't know how to tell you this," she began, and watched as her daughter's eyes narrowed. She paused as she tried to think of a way to continue.

"Tell me what, Ma?" Anne prompted, seeing the hesitation there.

Kim cleared her throat and just came out with it. "Your dad asked for a divorce last night," she said simply.

Anne stared at her for several seconds, her scowl deepening as she mentally confirmed that she heard what she thought she had heard, but even then she still wasn't sure. "You and Daddy are getting a divorce," she clarified just to make sure.

"Well, technically, your dad just asked for a divorce," Kim emphasized, knowing it would be small consolation to her daughter.

"Meaning what, Ma, seriously?" Anne challenged, her frustration at the inexplicability of it all showing through. "That Daddy just asked for shits and giggles? That he just thought he'd throw the question out there and see what came of it without really wanting to go through with it?"

"Maybe?" Kim said, fairly confident that Ron was serious but not knowing for sure and still so thrown by the whole thing that nothing in her life seemed certain anymore.

"Why would he want to do something like that, Ma?" Anne countered.

Kim sighed. "Apparently your dad has been unhappy for awhile," she admitted. "I wasn't really aware of it, but he was, and now it evidently has reached the point where he can't take it anymore and he needs his life to change. What I don't know is whether divorce is really the change he is looking for, or if the threat of divorce is what he is using to wake me up to the fact that he is unhappy."

"And why would he be that unhappy?" Anne questioned.

"It's complicated, Anne," Kim said truthfully. "Your dad and I have been together a long time and there is a lot of crap between us, most of it good but some of it bad. I thought we had gotten over the bad, but after a pretty shitty sleepless night, I realized maybe we hadn't and that it was mostly my fault. So, if you want someone to blame, blame me. The only thing your dad is to blame for is dropping it on us like a nuclear bomb."

"I don't want to blame either of you," Anne snapped. "I just want you to answer my question. Why is Daddy that unhappy? Why did he just suddenly declare that he wants a divorce after twenty years of marriage?"

"You'll have to ask him that," Kim answered. "I know some of the why but not all of it, and the some that I know I can't tell you; I'm sorry."

The quiet, unexpected apology diffused Anne's anger at her mother's refusal to tell her anything before she even had a chance to really build up a head of steam. It was obvious that whatever it was that had driven her parents apart had been there for a long time and whatever it was caused her mother, the woman she had hardly ever seen show any sign of weakness, a whole lot of pain. After what Ma had just been through, she wasn't about to twist the knife. "That's okay, Ma," Anne said softly. "You don't have to tell me, but I am going to ask Daddy about it."

"Please do," Kim requested sincerely. She glanced at the clock. "Shit," she cursed. She gathered up some stuff from her desk and got up. She hugged her daughter. "I'll see you later, Annie," she said. "I've got the quarterly threat meeting to go to right now."

Anne hugged her back. "Bye, Ma," she answered. "I'll see you this afternoon." Kim nodded and left the room. Anne activated her communicator. "Ernie?" she inquired when someone on the other end picked up. "Do you think you might have some time right now to talk?"

After leaving her office, Kim strode down the hallway, keeping her face neutral as she tried to get last night and this morning's meeting with Anne out of her head. Her home life had no place here, even if her eldest had decided to have the same career. She came to the conference room and the door slid open for her, causing all of her section heads sitting around the table to unconsciously straighten up when she came into the room. Her eyes made the rounds and they all met her gaze. She smiled. Ever professional, they were all here and all ready to go to work. She sat in her chair at the head of the table and her five section heads swiveled their chairs to face her. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," she greeted everyone. Everyone extended a courteous nod. "Thank you all for being so prompt to the quarterly threat meeting." She looked around and saw all of them clutching their mini-projectors in anticipation of being called on to report, and she nodded; it was time to get this meeting started. "Just so that everyone is aware, we are going to be assigning a member of the rookie officer class that just graduated to your departments today as well as going over reports," she informed them. "But now to the reports. Bioterrorism, you're up first. What has happened in the three months previous and what kind of nefarious biological activity can we expect from our mad scientist contingent over the next three months, Dr. Lurkin?"

Dr. Lurkin, aged but still spritely, jumped up out of his chair and excitedly activated the device in his hand that caused his presentation to be projected on the screen. "Well, Madame Director," he began, "as we all well know, things have been fairly quiet over the past three months. Our plants in the various evil biological laboratories have reported no suspicious activity beyond what is considered normal." He clicked through a few of his slides showing people in white lab coats doing various scientific things like using a micropipetter. "But," he continued, clicking to the next slide, which showed aerial views of both Plum Island, New York as well as Fort Detrick, Maryland, "as of last week, we started getting reports that the Fists are planning something and what they are planning involves these two facilities, which are the United States' primary location for infectious biological agents."

"What does it appear they are after?" Kim asked.

"Tough to say," Dr. Lurkin admitted. "Any biological nasty that you can think of is kept in these two facilities. But, our agent seems to think it is this." He clicked the remote and a genomic map flashed on to the screen. Seeing the bored looks around him, he hastened to explain. "It's a new microorganism, a bacterium that is resistant to all known types of antibiotics. If this thing gets out into the general population, it could kill indiscriminately and we would have nothing to stop it."

"Why would the Fists be after something they can't control?" Kim asked. "They would be at risk too."

Dr. Lurkin shook his head. "They may or may not be at risk. All primates, with the exception of humans, carry a natural resistance to it," he said. Kim frowned. That meant Gorilla Fist, and, more importantly, her much-smarter human-primate hybrid daughter, Dian-Amy Fist, were probably immune. Dr. Lurkin continued. "And, with the Fists biological training, they might be able to modify or manipulate its genetics such that it becomes even more dangerous. "

"I see," Kim commented. "Do we know where the Fists' lab is currently located?"

"We do," Dr. Lurkin confirmed.

"Good," Kim stated. "Send a team of agents to infiltrate and cripple their operation. That should stall them long enough for us to post a security detail around the properties in question so that we can make sure that they don't get what they are after. Dr. Renton," she said, turning to the General Villainy section head. "You will be responsible for setting up that team once Bioterrorism has completed their destructive distraction." Felix and Dr. Lurkin nodded. "Anything else?" she asked, turning once again to Dr. Lurkin.

"I don't think so, Madame Director," Dr. Lurkin replied, shaking his head. "That is all we had on the horizon."

"Very good," Kim answered. "And now to your rookie officer assignment. I know this comes of little surprise, but the only graduate we had that meets the qualifications for your department is Dr. Ernest Load." Dr. Lurkin nodded, smiling. He had been waiting for years Ernie to finish his PhD and join him full time in the lab. "Please make sure that he goes with your team to the Fists'. His expertise will probably be needed for containment issues."

"Sure thing, ma'am," he said amiably, and Kim nodded.

"Okay, next section then. Dr. Renton, we've already gone to you, so why don't you brief us on General Villainy," Kim requested.

"Of course, Madame Director," Felix said, pushing back and levitating his wheelchair to gain some height. He pushed a button the side of his ride and his presentation started up. "Overall, things have been exceptionally quiet over the last three months, especially considering my section is a catch-all for all of the non-specific dross that the rest of the organization refuses to deal with." Kim rolled her eyes. Felix never missed an opportunity to point that out. "There has been one notable exception, however," he said, clicking his remote and advancing to the next slide, which happened to show the Statue of Liberty along with a machine schematic. "From the intel that have gotten from our operatives, Señorita Conchita Senior and her father Junior are plotting to steal the Statue for Granddaddy's birthday. That machine," he continued, indicating the schematic, "is a technologically superior crane that they intend to use." Kim lifted an eyebrow. She expected this sort of asinine plot from Junior, but Connie was smarter than her father, so she usually headed off dumbass plots like this. Felix saw the look and anticipated her question before she could ask it. "From what we have heard Señorita Conchita Senior is still angry with her mom for leaving her father for another woman, and this is her way for revenge."

Kim coughed uncomfortably; that was a little too close to home. She covered by ordering people around. "As soon as we are done here, send a team to the Statue on a protection detail," she told Felix. "Who's building the crane?"

"Hench-Co," Felix answered.

Kim nodded. "Drs. Porter and Flanner?" she said, turning to Vivian and Justine, her Weaponry and Cybernetics section co-heads that were in charge of tracking Hench-co's activities. "Do we have any idea where this is being built?"

"It's not, at least not yet, Madame Director," Vivian answered. "It's on the production schedule for next week according to our agent posing as a shift supervisor."

"Good," Kim said. "We'll have someone go in there and get the plans. I'll hold off on specifics until we hear from you both about other Hench-co plots in the works."

Felix nodded. He clicked his remote and the screen went blank. "That's the only significant threat we have in the pipeline, Madame Director," he concluded, landing his wheelchair and turning back towards the table.

Kim nodded. "All right then, and before we move on to Weaponry and Cybernetics, you should know that your rookie officer assignment is Anne Possible. Her aptitude scores matched the best with your section," she informed him. Felix couldn't hold back a small, smug grin. The highest scoring graduate who also happened to be the boss' daughter was coming to his section; if he couldn't have his own kid, that was a nice consolation prize "Weaponry and Cybernetics, what have you got for us?" she asked, rapidly moving on.

Justine stood up and activated her projector. "As everyone is aware, Hench-co is always the major player weaponry and cybernetics. In times past, this was limited to building technological items for other criminal organizations, but since the hostile takeover of Hench-co by the Hyperkinetic Syndicate, it is now also engaged in building technology for home-grown projects." Kim's mouth twitched. Leave it to Justine to be understated and punny all at the same time. The takeover had been hostile, all right; there had been no survivors after the Syndicate had taken out the board meeting five years ago. The Hyperkinetic Syndicate unexpectedly had not died with Hyperkinetic; instead, the younger brother that Shego had died to save left GJ and took the Syndicate over, having sworn revenge on Kim for killing his brother. It took him awhile, but eventually, he had built up his forces and executed his plan. It was a ruthless, execution-style killing spree that had completely taken GJ by surprise and it served the twin purposes of making a new evil conglomerate and convincing Dr. Director that she was passed her prime and she should hand the reins over to Kim. "As mentioned, one of the outside projects they are working on is the crane for the Seniors," Justine said, flipping over to the same schematic that Felix had shown. "But there are no other major outside projects on the agenda, at least for now," she finished, sitting down and yielding the remote to her section co-head.

"Internal projects, however, are a different story," Vivian said, advancing the slide to one that showed a number of blurry photographs. "As we've spoken about previously, their R&D department has been running full-tilt for at least a year, and now they are churning out prototypes at rapid pace. From the disjointed intel that we have gotten from various sources, it seems like they are building a mega-weapon of some sort, but we can't be sure."

Kim scowled pensively. A mega-weapon was a bad thing, obviously, but she couldn't go in there and rip the place up based on conjecture. "Send in an infiltration team," she ordered, knowing the computer guys had probably already tried remote information retrieval. "Get the plans for that crane and any other information that you can get your hands on about what they may be building. If it looks like the situation warrants it, we will go back in with force if need be." Vivian nodded and sat down. "Your assigned rookie officer is Susan Lipsky," she informed them. "Please make sure that she is a part of the infiltration team." Vivian and Justine looked at one another briefly in confusion before realizing she was calling Tony Lipsky by her real first name rather than by the usual diminutive of her middle name Antoinette.

"Of course, Madame Director," Justine said.

That done, Kim turned her attention to the next section head. "Does Computer Systems and Safety have any updates, Dr. Load?" she asked Wade.

Wade looked at her speculatively, not knowing if the pun was intentional or not. Kim wasn't smiling, so he let it drop. "Not really, Madame Director," he admitted. "We have the daily hack attempts into our system and the systems that we monitor, but nothing has gotten in past the second level of security. As you know, I was contacted several weeks ago by WAC to attempt hacking into Hench-co's database to see if we could get some information on what is going on with that potential weapon they are building, but so far even my best guys haven't gotten in. We are still trying, though."

"Good," Kim said, not bothering to ask him for potential future problems. Computer emergencies were damn near impossible to predict.

"So who's the newest GJ computer geek?" Wade asked, before Kim could tell him.

Kim smiled. "Alexander Flanner-Renton," she said, and Wade chuckled. Justine and Felix's kid had been hacking into systems since he was five, so it was a perfect fit. Kim nodded, and moved on to the last section they had to go over in the meeting. "Dr. Lipsky, what is the situation with Assassination, Kidnapping and Extortion?"

"Only one situation to report, Madame Director," Drakken said, turning on his projector to reveal a picture of two people, the world's best golfer and her father. "In the past month, we were informed about a kidnapping plot involving the two people you see here, Samantha Forrest and her father Eldrick," he said, pointing at each one in succession somewhat unnecessarily. "We were asked by the FBI to render aid, as it turned out to be an international matter. At first, we thought it was for extortion purposes only; the family is quite wealthy. But further investigation revealed that they had been kidnapped by Duff Killigan and his son Mulligan, and that they were after skill-based compensation not monetary."

Kim raised an eyebrow. "They kidnapped them for lessons," she said succinctly.

"So it would seem, yes, Madame Director," Drakken replied. "But we were able to recover the victims without harm and the perpetrators are now behind bars."

"Excellent," Kim said. "Thank you, Dr. Lipsky. Are there any upcoming plots that we are aware of or have intelligence for?"

"No, nothing beyond the usual insanity," he answered.

"Good," Kim commented. She jotted down a note on her pad before continuing. "And, as I am sure you suspect by now considering there is only one graduate left, the rookie officer assigned to your section is Elizabeth Porter-Director."

"So I figured, Madame Director," Drakken said wryly and Kim quirked a grin before her face grew sober. There was one more thing that she wanted to talk to her ranking people about.

Kim stood up and looked around the table. "There is one more thing that I think we need to address before we adjourn," she said. "As I am sure you have all noted, the incoming rookie officer class is comprised exclusively of children of people that sit around this table. And we all know that this isn't an accident; they were all close enough in age that we were able to defer some and accelerate others so that they could all join the officer ranks at the same time." She looked around and smirked. "Do we think we are all ready for that?" she asked wryly.

Dr. Porter spoke up. "Well, we aren't going to be here running this place forever, and we need officers that we can trust to take our place. I can think of no officer class that is better, and by being together in officer training and graduating together, I hope they have the same camaraderie that we have and as a unit can truly be the leaders we would like," she said pragmatically.

"No better class?" Dr. Lurkin, the only one without a kid on the list questioned, only to have the rest of the table raise their eyebrows at him. "I'm kidding, people," he muttered. "All of your kids have been around here from the time they could walk and all the lot of them have ever wanted was to follow in your footsteps. I'm glad we finally made it official."

Heads around the table nodded in wry agreement. Kim looked at them all. "So, I guess it's time to give them their wings," she said crisply. "Is everyone clear on their missions and assignments?" Everyone nodded. "All right then, meeting adjourned," she declared. Everyone gathered up their stuff and left the room, scattering to their various offices while Kim delivered the news to her rookie officers anxiously waiting in the smaller conference room next door.

"Officers Flanner-Renton, Lipsky, Load, Porter-Director, and Possible," she began. "First off, let me officially welcome to your career here at Global Justice." The new officers grinned in anticipation and Kim found herself smiling at their enthusiasm. "Based on your aptitude scores you have been assigned to following sections: Flanner-Renton, Computer Systems and Safety; Lipsky, Weaponry and Cybernetics; Load, Bioterrorism; Porter-Director, Assassination, Extortion and Kidnapping; and Possible, General Villainy," she informed them. She looked around; Alex and Ernie didn't look a bit surprised, Tony and Liz were obviously pleased and Anne just looked pensive. "Please report to your section heads for further instructions; now get to work," she concluded crisply, nodding sharply before striding out the door. The new officers blinked, looked around at each other and shrugged, getting up from their seats and heading out themselves.

Their new section heads wasted no time putting them to work, and because of the urgency of the missions their sections had been assigned, Anne, Ernie and Tony found themselves on missions before the day was out. Tony was promptly put in charge of finding a way into Hench-co and formulating a plan to get in and out with the least amount of disruption and loss of life, while Ernie was charged with studying the Fists' operation for possible containment issues. Anne's mission was off-site and she abruptly found herself heading to the hangar for a transport to Statue of Liberty protection detail, a task she normally would have relished, but was now ambivalent about due to the problems at home.

Ernie and Tony, having heard the scuttlebutt about her deployment around the building, were waiting when she got there. Ernie gave her a quick hug. "Call me if you need me, Anne," he said sincerely, knowing she probably didn't want to leave with all that was happening.

"Thanks, Ernie," she said gratefully, hugging him back. She let him go and looked at Tony, noting the sympathetic look on her pale aqua face. Ernie must have told her something was up, Anne realized. She pushed the dark navy-blue curls away from Tony's forehead and kissed her softly on the lips, not really caring that someone might see them. They hadn't done much to hide their relationship anyway.

They parted and Tony touched her cheek. "Ernie told me a little of it," she confirmed. "I'm sorry, Red," she said. "Call me for anything," she ordered.

"I will," Anne promised and, glancing up, saw her mother, causing her to drop her arms. The other two turned and all of them froze not knowing what to do.

Kim looked at them. She had spotted the trio when she had coming to the hangar and had seen both the hug and the kiss. The kiss had surprised her, true; she hadn't thought Anne had gotten involved with anyone since she had broken up with her last boyfriend. Apparently, officer training had brought some people closer than others, she thought wryly. Anne was an adult, though, and the decision was hers; Kim, for many reasons, just wished she hadn't chosen a fellow GJ agent. "Officers Lipsky and Load, don't you have some place else to be?" she asked pointedly. Tony and Ernie took the hint, waved bye to Anne and walked away quickly, grateful that the matter appeared to have been dropped.

"I was going to tell you…" Anne began, but Kim cut her off.

"I think Tony's a lovely girl," she said with an affectionate grin. "Just be careful and discreet, please." Anne smiled. Her mom was strict but often awesome. "And I just came down here to say goodbye, and don't worry about what's happening here; your dad and I will figure it out. You, Agent Possible, need to focus on your job," she said firmly.

Anne nodded. "Of course, Madame Director," she said. Her mom smiled and gave her a hug; Anne hugged her back and then boarded the hovercraft. "Bye, Ma," she said impishly as the door closed. Kim shook her head and watched the hovercraft take off before turning and going back to her office.


	6. D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Chapter 6 – D-I-V-O-R-C-E

GJ Headquarters – Tuesday Morning

Kim sighed as she shuffled some paperwork on her desk. She was restless; Bioterrorism and WAC hadn't given her their plans, and they had to get moving or the situations could escalate into something significantly worse. She scowled at the budget allocation report that was currently in her line of sight. Her restlessness of course had nothing to do with the fact that she had gone home last night to find that Ron had taken his important things from the house and had left his key on the kitchen table. The key had only been symbolic; they had switched to voice recognition locks years ago, but it had still stung to see it lying there.

Kim glanced at the clock, surprised when it said 12:30PM. She hadn't realized that it had gotten that late. She gave half a thought to food but decided it wasn't worth it and grabbed her budget report. She had just gotten through the first line when her administrative assistant buzzed her. "Your 12:30PM appointment is here, Madame Director," Teresa said politely.

Kim checked her calendar in puzzlement; she didn't have a 12:30PM appointment, or so she thought. She looked at the date, and to her relief found that she wasn't completely losing her mind; she didn't have a scheduled appointment. "What is this in regards to, Teresa?" she asked. "I don't have a 12:30PM."

"The gentlemen insist that you should see them, Madame Director," Teresa replied. "All of their credentials check out and they have an official appointment card."

"Very well, Teresa; I'll be out shortly," Kim said, still suspicious. If whoever they were had a GJ-issued appointment card, the appointment had to be in the database, yet there was nothing there. She shifted her piles to clean up her desk, got up and walked out into the outer office where Teresa sat. She shot a speculative glance at her visitors' chairs and smiled wryly when she saw the "gentlemen". No wonder they had gotten through without a real appointment.

"Hey Mom," Sean and Jon said simultaneously as they were prone to do.

Kim looked at Teresa and shook her head. "I truly doubt that the credentials on these two check out," she admonished. Teresa shrugged unapologetically. "So what do I owe the pleasure, guys?" she asked.

The boys looked uncomfortable and started to fidget. Kim's eyes narrowed and an eyebrow rose. Although they had recently turned eighteen and thanks to favorable genetics had grown into gorgeous blue-eyed, blond-haired and mature-looking young men, they were still their father's boys and they acted almost exactly the same way he had at that age, meaning they were prone to bouts of immaturity like fidgeting when they thought they were in trouble. Finally, Jon spoke up. "Anne called us last night and we think we should talk about some stuff," he admitted.

Kim sighed. "Come on in to the office," she requested.

"Actually, we came to take you to lunch," Sean interjected. "So you are getting out of the office for a while."

"Am I?" Kim replied.

"Yup," Sean and Jon said simply, each one of them grabbing an arm and steering her toward the door.

Kim sighed. Even though they were a foot taller than she was, she could have kicked their butts had she wanted to. Instead, she allowed herself to be led. "I'll be back in a while, Teresa," she said resignedly.

"Of course, Madame Director," Teresa said, turning her attention back to her work

As soon as they had left her office and started making their way out of the building, Kim turned and asked her offspring a question of her own. "So why aren't the two of you getting ready to move into the dorms like you should be?" she chastised. "You only have a week now that your counselors' jobs at Camp Wannaweep have ended to get ready for the beginning of the Fall semester."

Sean and Jon looked at one another and shrugged. "This is more important," Sean said.

"Yeah, it is," Jon agreed. "Besides, Anne and Tony promised us they would help us move everything."

"Anne has been deployed," Kim said shortly before realizing what Jon had said. "Wait. Anne and Tony Lipsky are supposed to help you move?" she clarified, a bit perturbed that she seemed to be one of the last people to know Anne was seeing someone new.

"Well, yeah," Sean answered, unconcerned. "Ever since they started dating we never see Anne without Tony. Sometimes it seems like they are practically living together." Jon, seeing the look that their mother was giving them smacked Sean and gave him a look of his own, making Sean recognize that he might have said too much. "Um, you did know that they were dating, right?" he asked hesitantly, hoping that she did so Anne wouldn't kill him.

"Yes, I did," Kim answered, and he let out a small sigh of relief.

"So, anyway," Jon continued. "They are helping us out so we have plenty of time. Right now, we want to talk to you," he concluded, opening the door to the Chinese restaurant they had walked to while talking. Kim looked at him but said nothing as she walked through the door. Her boys followed and after being seated by the hostess, they sat in the booth and looked at one another in silence, each of them picking up a menu to escape. After a few minutes of this, the waiter came by and took their orders, taking the menus with him and forcing someone to speak.

Sean decided he might as well. "So, yeah, anyway, Anne called us last night and told us that Dad asked for a divorce," he said, opening up the conversation with a bang.

"Yeah, he did," his mother confirmed with a frown.

"Why, Mom?" came the simultaneous, almost petulant question. The twins glanced at one another and Jon continued. "Why would Dad ask for a divorce, Mom?" he asked, extending the question to its full length. "You and he always seemed fine. Did you guys fight when we weren't around or something?"

"No, we have never really fought," Kim answered. "Your dad is so easy going that nothing ever escalated into a real full-blown fight. I get pissed at him, sure, but my anger never makes it into the next day. And he hardly ever gets mad at me. That's why this whole thing is a shock." Her sons' faces grew angry, and being their mother, Kim could read what they were thinking. "Don't you two start blaming your father," she ordered, knowing what she had just said made it seem like Ron was at fault and knowing her boys were fiercely protective of her. "Just because he didn't show it doesn't mean that he wasn't angry with me and that he didn't have a reason."

"But why would he be angry with you?" Sean asked.

"I haven't really been the partner in life that I should have been," Kim replied truthfully. "I work too much, I don't contribute my fair share to the family and I take him and his love for granted."

"Well that is a load of bullshit," Jon answered succinctly. "Sure, you work long hours, but you were always there for us."

"I think that is part of the problem," Kim said. "I made time for you kids, but never for your dad."

"So what?"Sean challenged. "You've been saving the world since you were younger than us. You guys got married after you started working for GJ. He had to have known what that would entail. Why is it getting to him now?"

"I think it has been getting to him for a long time," Kim admitted. "But now with everyone out of the house, he can do something about it.

Her twins looked at her obviously displeased and obviously not completely believing her. Jon spoke up. "Sean, Anne and I talked about it last night and we think there is a lot you aren't telling us. And after we talked to Dad, it became pretty clear that neither of you are going to tell us whole truth," he said.

"You talked to your dad?" Kim asked, surprised.

"Yeah, and he was just about as helpful as you have been," Sean said grumpily. "So, anyway, all three of us talked, and we decided that we don't really want to know what's happening between you and Dad. We just want you guys to talk to each other and try to work some stuff out. If you can, we think that would be awesome. If you can't, well, we'll still love you and support you both even though we think it sucks."

Kim looked at her sons. She and Ron's marriage had quite obviously not been perfect, but at least they had managed to have and not screw up three really good kids. "All right," she promised. "I'll talk to your dad sometime next week." Her boys looked at one another, then at her and nodded. Their food picked that moment to arrive, and being typical teenage boys, they dug right in, gratefully abandoning the serious conversation in pursuit of food. Kim smiled wryly, picked up her fork and joined them.

After lunch, the boys said goodbye to their mom; in spite of their protests they really did have a lot to do to get ready for school and they needed to get to work. Kim went back to her office and back to the job of keeping the world safe. As it turned out, that job decided to be more time-consuming than it had been in a while, and most of the week had suddenly passed before Kim even had the opportunity to step back and realize it. In preparation for leaving for the weekend, Kim started calling all of her section heads to see how their various missions were progressing.

Kim buzzed Felix first; she hadn't heard from him since they had deployed agents to the Statue of Liberty. "What's the situation at the Statue, Felix?" she asked when he came onto the monitor.

"So far all clear, Madame Director," Felix answered. "Officer Possible reports that there has been no unusual or suspicious activity. The way her daily reports are recounted makes it seem like that they are all fairly bored out there."

"Hm," Kim commented. "Well, keep them out there until we have neutralized the threat. I'll page WAC next and see how we are coming along on that."

"Very well, Madame Director," Felix replied. "We'll be waiting on your call."

Kim nodded and cut off the transmission. She tapped a few keys and paged WAC. "What is the situation with the Hench-co infiltration, Justine?" Kim asked when Dr. Flanner picked up.

"Officer Lipsky is working on it, Madame Director," Justine replied. "It looks like they have recently upgraded their systems and it will take a little more planning. I would suspect we are looking at another few days before we would be able to mobilize. I can give you the final plans at Monday's staff meeting."

"What about the crane?" Kim questioned. "Wasn't it supposed to start production this week?"

"Yes, it was, Madame Director, but our man on the inside is stalling it the best he can. There might be a little built when we get there, but we are integrating a plan to destroy it when we go to retrieve the information," Justine explained.

"Excellent. Good work," Kim complemented her.

"Thank you, Madame Director; I'll pass on your compliments to Officer Lipsky," Justine answered. "She seems to be in need of some cheering up."

"Why?" Kim asked, although she knew what it probably was.

"I believe she is unhappy with a certain deployment," Justine said, the corner of her mouth lifting into a smirk.

"Ah. I thought that might be it," Kim replied with an answering smirk of her own. "Well, remind Officer Lipsky that the sooner the crane is destroyed, the sooner the deployment ends."

Justine chuckled. "Will do, Madame Director," she said, signing off.

Kim shook her head; apparently she was the only one within her familial, occupational and societal circles that didn't know that Anne and Tony were dating. Irritated, she paged Dr. Lurkin and launched in as soon as she saw his face. "Dr. Lurkin, what is the status with our plan for the Fists?" she inquired.

"Ernie is finishing it up as we speak, ma'am," he said cheerfully. "We should have it all drawn up by Monday's staff meeting."

"All right. I will see you Monday then," Kim answered. She looked around her desk. It was Friday evening and it was time to go home. All of her GJ business was finally finished, so she had no excuse to sleep on her couch for another night. She didn't want to go, but she gathered up her things and went home to her empty and silent house.

The weekend was spent helping Tony help the boys move into the dorms and it allowed Monday to come blessedly fast. The staff meeting was the first thing on the agenda and all the sections that needed to submitted their mission plans for final approval. They all looked good, so Kim gave them the go ahead. The Bioterrorism was scheduled for the next day and WAC picked Wednesday to infiltrate Hench-co. With everything in place, the meeting was adjourned and Kim found herself walking back to her office.

She had barely gotten there and gotten sat down when Teresa buzzed her. "You have someone to see you, Madame Director," her assistant informed her.

Kim frowned. Again, there was no official appointment in the database. "Who is it, Teresa?" she asked, wondering how the hell all of these people were getting in.

"Your husband, ma'am," Teresa responded.

Kim didn't say anything at first as anger and shock were busy warring over control of her mind. Anger won out and she was a millisecond from telling Teresa to send him away before realizing that it was Monday and Ron had probably made the same promise to the kids that she had. The week was up and he like she had probably promised to come see her, so here he was. "Please send him in, Teresa," she said reluctantly.

She cut off the connection and waited, and within a few seconds her door slowly opened to reveal Ron. He didn't say anything but came and sat down in a chair opposite her desk. They spent several moments looking at one another, the both of them assessing the situation and trying to determine the best way to deal with it. Ron finally inhaled sharply and spoke. "So, I've heard that you talked to the kids about everything that is going on," he said, stating the obvious in an attempt to get the conversation started.

"I did," Kim responded. "I told Anne the day after you walked out and she told her brothers."

Ron shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I don't really think I 'walked out', Kim," he objected.

"Then what the hell would you call it, Ron?" Kim challenged, her vocal volume rising as her anger showed through. "I came home from work and was trying to watch some news, and the next thing I knew you were saying wanted a divorce and you were walking out of the door."

Ron sighed. "I was angry, Kim," he explained.

"Well, no shit," Kim said derisively before taking a deep breath to calm herself so she wouldn't say anything she would come to regret. "Can you tell me something, Ron?" she requested. "Why the hell are you so unhappy? Anne and the boys have all asked me that." She looked at him, noticed his guilty look, and her eyes softened. "I don't mean to be a bitch, Ron, I really don't," she said honestly. "But we've been married for twenty years and you knew before I married you who I was and what I did for a living. Why is it that now it is a problem?"

Ron frowned. "A couple of months ago it really hit me that as of the fall it was just going to be me and you in the house," he said. "That thought depressed me to no end, and for a while I thought it was just empty nest syndrome. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was unhappy because without the kids I wouldn't be able to keep pretending that you actually loved me and that you gave a damn about our marriage." Kim's eyes narrowed, but Ron kept talking so she couldn't interrupt or kill him. "Look, I know you did your best, Kim, and you're right; I knew what I was getting into when I married you. It's just that I thought thingsIhad a chance to get better but it seems like they have gotten worse. With the kids gone, I just wanted a clean break," he concluded.

Kim looked at him. "Okay, fair enough," she said quietly, surprising Ron who thought she might become even angrier than she was. "But why the sudden announcement? Don't you think we could have talked to me about it before you stomped your feet and stormed out of the house?"

"I shouldn't have done that," Ron admitted. "It was a chicken-shit way of doing things and I apologize. I'd had a rough day, you seemed oblivious as always, and I guess I just lost it. I'm sorry."

Kim snorted softly. "S'okay. You're right; I was oblivious," she said gruffly. "And I've been pretty oblivious about a lot of things for a while, so I'm sorry too."

Ron brightened at her apology and Kim was glad she'd said it. She was even gladder that she meant it. "Thanks," Ron said. "It means a lot."

"You're welcome," Kim answered. They lapsed into silence again, but at least this time the silence was amiable and not frosty. "So what do we do now?" Kim asked after a few more minutes had passed.

Ron coughed. This whole meeting was going better than he planned, so he decided to bring up an idea that he'd had to see how Kim liked it. "Um, well, truthfully, I was hoping that I could ask you out on a date," Ron said hesitantly.

Kim's eyebrows rose. Okay, that was completely unexpected. "And why would you want to do that?" she asked.

"Well, we both know that you only married me because of Anne," he began. Kim wanted to protest but knew he was right so she didn't bother. "Now with everyone out of the house, I was thinking that maybe we could start all over and see what a relationship not based around our kids would be like," he offered hopefully.

Kim's breath caught a little when she saw the hopeful, almost eager look on his face. After some time to cool off, he very obviously didn't want a divorce but wanted to work things out. All she had to do was say yes to his date request and they could try to fix the mess their marriage had become. They probably could and their family would survive intact. It seemed perfect and so she shocked them both with her answer. "I do thank you for the offer, Ron, but I just don't think that us trying to work this out is the best thing for either of us," she blurted out. Ron look shell-shocked and Kim did her best to explain. "Listen, Ron," she said, coming out from behind her desk to sit on the front edge right in front of him. "I do love you with all of my heart and I have since we were four. But if the last few days being tormented with my thoughts and memories have taught me anything, it's that I don't love you like you deserve to be loved by your wife. You were right; I've only ever loved one person like that, and you, wonderful as you are, are entitled to much more than I could ever give you." She cupped his cheek and kissed him. "I thank you for loving me and I thank you for being such an amazing father to our children. But now, I think we need to be apart," she said sadly.

Ron leaned into her touch and looked up at her with a resigned sadness on his features. "Thank you being honest," he said. He took her hand from off his cheek and kissed it. He squeezed it and let it fall before getting up from the chair and turning towards the door. He turned back briefly. "I'll call my lawyer in the morning," he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. "Here's my new address and phone number," he explained, handing it to her. He turned back toward the door and put his hand on the knob. "Bye, KP," he said softly. "I love you." He didn't wait for a response but opened the door and walked out, shutting the door gently behind him.

Kim waited for the click before getting up from her desk and walking back around to sit in her chair. She pressed a button on her phone. "I'm not available for the rest of the day unless it is an emergency, Teresa," she said shortly. She stayed in that chair for the next few hours wanting to get the hell out of there but being duty bound to stay. As soon as she was confident that everything was in place for the Bioterrorism strike the next day, she got up, walked out the office, went home and drank until she passed out on the couch. She awoke the next morning with a blistering headache, but being her typical self, she popped a couple of ibuprofen and shook it off, going about her morning routine as if nothing was amiss. By the time she had gotten to work, the drugs and epinephrine had kicked in, her headache was gone and Kim had been replaced with Madame Director.

Bioterrorism deployed it task force in the morning and Kim received periodic updates throughout the day. By noon they had arrived and set a perimeter, and by 2PM, thanks to Ernie's ingenious plan, they had successfully tracked down the potential bioterrorism agents, invaded the facility and contained the would-be biological hazards. The demolition team came in after them, and working as efficiently as ever, they trashed the place in no time. Their job done, everyone boarded the transport and were on their way back to GJ.

"I think that should put the Fists' out of commission for a while, Madame Director," Dr. Lurkin said cheerfully. "We destroyed all of their materials and pertinent equipment. The only thing that didn't go to plan was the capture of the perpetrators. I'm afraid to say they got away," he concluded regretfully.

"They won't be much of a threat without their lab, Dr. Lurkin," Kim reasoned. "Please commend your team on their excellent job."

"Of course, Madame Director," Dr. Lurkin agreed. "I've already sent them out for a keg."

Kim rolled her eyes. "I meant put a letter in their file, Dr. Lurkin," she sighed.

"Oh, I know, ma'am, but they like the beer better," he answered impishly.

"If any of the agents from WAC come by, tell them to get lost; they have a mission tomorrow," she ordered. "And if anyone asks, I know nothing about this."

"About what?" Dr. Lurkin questioned with a grin. "Have a good evening, Madame Director."

Kim shook her head and cut off the transmission. She glanced at the clock. It had gotten later than she thought it was and it was time for her to go home. Yeah, that just wasn't happening, she decided and went to bed down on her couch.

When the morning came, Kim was up, dressed and out to the deployment hangar to see the WAC team, especially Tony, off. The agents straightened; Madame Director didn't come down here often, but everyone knew she did these inspections from time to time and every team was always ready just in case. One officer in particular was very cognizant that she might show up and had taken special precautions.

"Officer Lipsky," Kim said, stopping in front of her. It was obvious from the moment she had walked in the room that Tony was fairly vibrating with impatient anticipation. "Please step forward."

"Yes, Madame Director?" Tony said.

"Please make sure that the threat against the Statue is neutralized. I want that deployment to come home," she ordered.

Tony blinked. She could have sworn that there was something akin to gentle teasing in the Director's eyes. "Of course, Madame Director," she said formally, and watched speculatively as an eyebrow quirked of its own volition. Madame Director smiled almost imperceptibly before nodding and moving on down the line.

After the Director's impromptu inspection, the team left to go do their job. Everyone on either side of the law knew where the Hench-co headquarters were so getting to them was no problem. The real problem was getting inside a technology and security manufacturing plant without being detected. Tony had decided that the delivery dock was the best bet of getting in as secretly as possible and so their vehicle had been disguised to look like one of the laundering company vans that did all of Hench-co's uniform cleaning.

Tony hid in the back as the guards checked their IDs and paperwork. Blue-skinned people were few and far between, and because of her parents and their history in both good and evil, everyone involved in crime and crime prevention would have a good idea who she was. She, like Anne, also looked a lot like her mother, which didn't help matters. She held her breath as the guard handed back all their paperwork and then let it out slowly as the window was rolled up and the gate opened in front of them.

They parked in their guard-designated spot and the two visible agents got out and pulled what appeared to be two carts of freshly-laundered uniforms out of the back and pushed them up the dock ramp and into the warehouse. When they got inside into a quiet area, the four agents that were in the carts got out, smoothed their Hench-co uniforms and went looking for trouble while the other two continued to play their role and started to load up soiled clothing.

Tony sent two of her guys down the hallway towards IT while she and her partner continued to the manufacturing floors. After a brief check of the daily work order to see on what platform the crane was being built, the two GJ agents navigated their way through the crowded manufacturing floor to the proper location. Their guy had done a good job; what was sitting before them didn't even look like a crane yet. Under the pretense of doing an inspection, they noted the parts that surrounded the barely-constructed crane and attached charges to them as well as to the crane itself. They set the timers for fifteen minutes and activated them, walking away nonchalantly after it was done.

They headed back the way they had come and met up with the two other agents on the way back to the van. After carefully looking around to make sure they weren't being watched by either live people or security cameras, the four agents buried themselves in the dirty laundry and the other two pushed them back to the van. The other agents loaded them up, got in and drove to the gate. The guard opened the gate and they were away. They turned the corner and sped away. Tony watched the timer and when the time was up, she activated the live satellite feed of Hench-co, smiling when she saw a large smoking hole in the roof over the manufacturing floor. She gave the thumbs up and the driver punched it sending them speeding back towards headquarters.

Tony debriefed Dr. Flanner when she got in and Justine promptly reported the success of the crane destruction and mega-weapon plan acquisition to Kim. Kim congratulated them and promptly called Felix to order the pullback of the contingent guarding the Statue. Anne and her bored cohorts left immediately and by Wednesday were back at GJ headquarters. Kim wasn't surprised to see Anne heading towards WAC as soon as she'd left her mother's office.

After Anne got back, life settled down into a semblance of a comfortable routine. Kim and Ron gathered their children and as gently as they could, told them that the divorce was going forward. The kids didn't like it, but, true to their word, all three of them showed nothing but love and support for their mom and dad. The boys then went off to college, Anne continued to settle into life as a GJ agent and Kim got used to going home to an empty house. Two months passed like this and Kim couldn't help but notice how close Anne and Tony were getting in the interim. They did a pretty good job of hiding it at work, but Anne was her kid and Kim could tell that they could barely keep their hands off one another. It made her happy to see Anne happy and seeing her daughter in love kept her mind off her own life.

The two months of GJ business passed just as quickly, as evil doers continued to threaten the world and GJ continued to deal with it. There were no major threats, but plenty of minor ones that they took care of. WAC was also kept busy working on the plans that Tony's team had gotten from Hench-co's computer system and after eight weeks of work had finally figured out what it did. It was the meeting that Justine called to explain what they had found out about the device that turned out to signal the end of the unexpected respite.

"It's a huge microwave," she said simply, clicking her remote to put up a picture of the schematic of what they were pretty sure the thing looked like.

"It took you two months to figure out that it was a giant microwave?" Felix asked incredulously, and Kim's eyebrow rose. If Felix didn't want to be sleeping on the couch, he should really phrase his questions better.

"Yes, it did," Justine said shortly, her eyes snapping. Kim hoped their couch was comfy. "Because for the longest time the fragmented schematics we had made no sense. It wasn't until about a week ago that we realized that the design had no discernable power source and no transformer. Knowing that made us stop putting the damn thing together wrong and all the components fell into place."

"Why would they build something with no power source?" Wade asked.

"We have a theory, but we are not exactly sure," Vivian admitted, speaking for the first time.

"I know why," Kim interjected, her displeasure showing on her face. "They don't need one. That machine is not designed to create microwaves; I would bet anything that it's made to amplify them." They all sat back in their chairs and pondered that. Justine and Vivian looked at each other and nodded.

"That was our theory, Madame Director," Vivian answered. "That is the only thing that seems plausible."

"You think Hench-co is building this for Hyperkinetic?" Drakken asked.

"Hench-co is Hyperkinetic," Justine reminded him.

"So, yes," Kim concluded. "Drs. Flanner and Porter, get another strike team ready to go into Hench-co," she ordered. "We need to take out that thing ASAP. Put Lipsky in charge again. She did a really excellent job last time." Drakken beamed, but didn't say anything. "I want that team to be ready in 48 hours, so all other sections should defer resources and manpower to them," she said firmly.

Justine and Vivian nodded. "We'll be ready, Madame Director," Justine said.

"CSS is ready to assist," Wade said.

"As is General Villainy," Felix added.

"All right then. Meeting adjourned," Kim stated and everyone scattered to get ready for the unexpected mobilization.

Two days came and went in a heartbeat and Justine's team was ready to deploy with typical professional efficiency. They were set to leave at 15:00 hours and at 10:00 hours, Anne unexpectedly showed up at Kim's office. "How can I help you, Officer Possible?" Kim asked, a little concerned with the odd look Anne was giving her.

"Um, it's not a GJ matter, Madame Director," Anne answered before correcting herself. "Well, it's kind of a GJ matter but not really."

Whatever it was had to do with Tony, Kim decided. "So, what's on your mind, Anne?" she asked, switching to mom mode.

"Um, you know the ring you gave me for my high school graduation?" she asked hesitantly. "You know the one that belonged to Great-Grandma?"

"Yeah," Kim said slowly, trying not to smile as she surmised where this was going.

"Well, I was, um, hoping to ask Tony to, um, marry me and I was hoping that I could use it as an engagement ring," she said in a rush.

Kim hesitated briefly; she had actually lied to Anne about the where the ring had come from and she was slightly reticent about it becoming an engagement ring again. She dismissed those thoughts quickly; she was just being superstitious. "Of course you may use it for that," Kim said with a smile. "It's yours to do whatever you want with."

Anne broke out into a wide smile. "Thanks, Ma," she said coming around the desk and giving her mother a big hug.

Kim hugged her back. "Congratulations, sweetie," she said sincerely.

Anne blushed and ducked quickly out of the office. Kim chuckled and got back to work. It was a little odd that Anne had asked out of the blue like that, but then again not really. The latest mission to Hench-co, though still covert, was a search and destroy mission. People got killed on those, Anne knew that and she was taking no chances. So, it came of little shock when Kim noticed a titanium band had appeared on Tony's left ring finger before the team took off.

With the team off, Kim took a detour to the cafeteria to grab some food for what looked to be a long night. She got back to the office and Teresa handed her a manila envelope. "A courier just dropped this off for you," she said. Kim saw the address and her jaw twitched. She took it reluctantly and went into her office.

Just Outside Hench-co Headquarters – 17:00 Hours

Tony looked at her at her team of five and nodded. These were the same agents she had come with before, but this time there would be no ruse of being a uniform service. This time they were just sneaking in, using their intel and instruments to find the weapon and destroying the damn thing. Plans didn't get any more elegant.

Tony paged the computer guys and a quick two-tone chirp informed her that they had hacked into the security systems and they were good to go. In utter silence she and her team popped the grate of the shaft they were standing in front of and slid down the tube into the duct work. Using the digital map on her wrist, Tony led the rest of them through various tunnels until they were over the dedicated production floor that housed the device. After confirming this was the place with her instrument readings, Tony silently ordered her team to stay put until she gave them the all-clear. She carefully pushed the grate open and dropped into the room.

"Freeze!" the Hench-co guard bellowed as he came out of hiding and Tony disgustedly put up her hands. Shit, she thought; we walked right into a trap. Luckily, her communicator was still on, so not only could the guys on her team hear what was going on, so could the computer guys back at headquarters. "Order your men to come down here!" the guard said, moving his laser rifle to point at her face.

"Not a chance," Tony said dismissively.

"Are you trying to get killed?" the guard demanded. "Order them down here now or you die."

"No, kiss my ass, and bullshit," Tony said laconically, answering his question and replying to his statements. "'The Boss' doesn't allow guards to kill anyone. In fact, he doesn't allow anyone but himself to perform executions. So unless you have a death wish, you are bluffing."

The guard scowled and Tony smirked. "Fine. Then we'll get them out of that duct ourselves. You two, blow open the roof," he ordered the two guards behind him.

The two guards did what they were told, but nothing dropped out of the ceiling but dust, ceiling bits and cobwebs. His scowl grew deeper. "They still have to be in the building," he barked. "Find them." He roughly grabbed Tony's arm. "All right, GJ asshole, you are coming with me," he growled. Tony glared at him but went along with him quietly, mindful of the gun that he seemed all too keen on using in spite of company policy.

GJ Headquarters – 17:30 hours

Kim sat her coffee on the desk and sat down in her seat, placing the manila envelope that Teresa had given her right beside her coffee. She looked at it, sighed and opened it. It was exactly what she knew it had to be: the final divorce papers. She and Ron had worked everything out through their lawyers and all that remained was to sign the papers. Kim flipped though them to make sure that everything seemed to be what they agreed on and everything looked like it was. There would be no alimony for either party; Ron did make more at Smarty Mart than Kim did at GJ, but the fortune a long dead relative had left Kim outstripped Ron's yearly Naco royalties, so their finances were equitable. The kids, being legally adults, were left out entirely, and their house, with its state-the-art security system was actually owned by GJ, so it had to go to Kim. The rest of their property and assets had been equitably spilt.

Her perusal done, Kim sighed and picked up a pen. For one of the few times in her life, she signed her full married name on the bottom. She placed in the return envelope and sealed it before dropping it in the outgoing mail basket on her desk. She stared at it and a wave of sadness and regret washed over her. Only the sudden, insistent chime of her phone saved her from breaking down.

Kim answered it and Justine's dismayed face appeared on the monitor. "We have a situation, Madame Director," Justine said tersely. "The Hench-co team walked into what was an apparent trap. Most of the team got out safely, but Officer Lipsky was captured."

Kim scowled. "Were they able to destroy the device?" she asked.

"No, ma'am," Justine answered.

"Tell your agents to fall back but tell them to conceal themselves in the area," Kim ordered, her mind already going over several different plans.

Justine nodded. "Understood, Madame Director," she said and cut off the transmission.

Kim turned to her computer and accessed the current list of prisoners that they had in the penal system at the moment and was relieved to see that they were holding a couple of Hench-co's minor executives. That meant that at the very least they could offer a prisoner swap to get Tony out of there. Kim grimaced; she really hated prisoner swaps.

She looked around her office aimlessly while her mind tried to come up with a better plan. By chance, her eyes caught a glimpse of the manila envelope in her mail basket. She refocused her attention and glared at it, her mind temporarily distracted from the problem at hand to dwell on what it represented. The more she stared at it, the angrier she got. Her life was completely fucked up at the moment, and while she willingly took the blame for some of it, most of it could be traced to a single event, an event perpetrated by the very same fucking organization that was now threatening one of her officers.

The thought that the officer in question as of sometime this afternoon was her daughter's fiancé sealed Kim's decision instantly. They were going in there, they were getting Tony out, and then they were going to blow up the entire fucking operation to kingdom come. She didn't care that who Anne was in love with should have no bearing on her decision as head of GJ, nor did she care that this was probably a gross misuse of her power and responsibility. The only thing that mattered was that her daughter could be facing the same sort of fate as she, and she was going to be damned if she was going to let that happen. The fact that her agents had failed in their mission to destroy the device was a boon. It allowed her to do what she wanted without it seeming too excessive. "Felix!" she barked when she had gotten him on the line. "I want you to assemble a strike team to launch an assault on Hench-co. We have an officer imprisoned on the inside. Get her out, get all of the employees out of the building and then blow the entire facility apart. We tried doing it the quiet way, but we have to take out that thing, so now I want you guys to make some noise."

"Right away, Madame Director," Felix answered, a little surprised but happy nonetheless. He didn't care much for the sneaking around; this type of action was much more his style.

"And Felix," Kim said just before she let him go. "Officer Possible is NOT to go on this mission, understand?"

Felix didn't understand, but he wasn't going to argue with the boss lady when she was this serious about something. "Understood, Madame Director," he lied. Kim nodded, so he cut off the call and started to contact all of his people. Soon he had a squad of 100 agents and officers. He briefed them and sent them off to the transports, promising them more information while in transit. They scattered and Felix was left facing a pissed-off Anne Possible.

"With all due respect, sir, this is bullshit," Anne snapped.

"The orders come from the top, Officer Possible," Felix said apologetically. Anne continued to glare at him. She respected her training enough not to question him further, but it was obvious that she wanted to. She turned away and Felix sighed. "You're relieved of duty for the next 12 hours, Officer Possible," he said, quite intentionally giving her tacit permission to disappear. Anne turned, startled. "I would be going insane if it were Justine," he admitted. Anne smiled and took off to sneak aboard one of the transports.

Needing the element of surprise so that Tony stayed safe, the strike team landed their transports as stealthily as they could in the cover that the area around Hench-co afforded. They broke up in to five groups of twenty and Anne, pretending she was supposed to be there, took charge of the one that was responsible for tracking down Tony. Tony apparently still had a functional GJ-issued tracking device, because Anne was able to get a signal as soon as she turned on the tracker. As the other groups fanned out, her group followed the beacon and it led them to a door surrounded by guards. It look them less than a minute to take them out and they raced down the maze of hallways that the door opened up to, following the signal until it guided them to a locked door. Anne blasted the lock and pushed the door open. At the same time a deafening alarm started sounding.

Knowing they needed to work fast, Anne ran into the room to find Tony shackled to the wall. She smiled and walked over to her fiancé, pulling out her laser weld and cutting the wrist restraints. "Hey beautiful," Anne said saucily as she sliced off the chains.

"If it were any way appropriate, I would so like to kiss you in gratitude right now," Tony said with a smirk.

Anne grinned. "Well, technically, I'm not supposed to be here right now, so it might be appropriate," she offered. Tony looked at her with an interested grin, but the alarms were still blaring and they had to get the hell out there. Anne contacted the other teams; the charges were ready, so she signaled the evacuation team to trigger the fire alarms to get the people out of the buildings. More alarms started to sound, and with the assistance of the noise and confusion, the GJ team got out of there with minimal resistance. When they got back to the transport, they switched on the video monitors to get the feeds from the cameras attached to the charges. When it looked like everyone was out, they switched to scan mode and confirmed it with the infrared filter on the cameras. Satisfied, Anne set off the explosives and the agents watched the Hench-co compound explode into a rapidly disintegrating inferno. The transports used to the cover to take off and they flew back to headquarters at top speed.

The Senior Estate – 48 hours later

Hyperkinetic rolled his eyes as the din around the conference table increased exponentially. Everyone was here; Killigan and Mulligan, Gorilla Fist and Dian-Amy, Electronique and of course, their hosts, Junior and Connie. All of them were clustered around the table and all of them were trying to outdo one another with their "How GJ Screwed Me" stories. He didn't like any of these people; he only liked working with his own organization, but he had received an invitation and couldn't be impolite. Politeness only went so far, though and soon Hyperkinetic's temper snapped. "Shut the hell up, all of you!" he snarled, and startled, the group quieted down.

Connie, knowing an opportunity, used the silence to get the meeting started. "So everyone knows why we are here. GJ has managed to interfere with all of us in the last few months. How are we going to get our revenge?"

"Before we get to that," Electronique interrupted. "What in the world did you think you were doing by imprisoning my daughter?" she demanded of Hyperkinetic, her disapproval of his actions apparent.

Hyperkinetic sighed. "She's a fucking GJ agent, Electronique," he pointed out. "She broke into my facility to steal and destroy my property."

"So she is her Papa's petite fille," Electronique sniffed. "That doesn't mean you should capture her."

Connie snorted. "From what I hear, she's Annie Possible's girl," she snarked. Dian-Amy chuckled.

"Who the fuck cares?" Hyperkinetic snapped. Connie really tended to get on his nerves. "Okay, I'll promise I'll leave her alone if she leaves me alone, okay, Electronique?" he offered.

"Qui," Electronique agreed.

"So now what do we do about GJ?" Connie asked, getting the conversation back on track.

"We could destroy their facilities," her father suggested. "I have several suppliers of explosives I could call on."

"We'd never get close enough," Dian-Amy protested. "They have security for miles around that place."

"I agree," Mulligan agreed. "If we tried an assault like that we'd just wind up dead or in jail. None of us are exactly running at full capacity right now."

"Maybe we could try something more low-key," Dian-Amy put forward. "How about we kidnap someone?"

"Like who?" Connie asked. "Anyone important would have too much security."

"Then how about someone important but not important?" Mulligan asked.

"Let me know when you start making sense," Connie said dismissively.

"I mean kidnap someone close to someone," Mulligan explained. "Like Possible's kids or something. We might get to them."

"So which one should we kidnap? The GJ officer or the 6'5" twins?" Hyperkinetic asked mockingly. "God, you people are stupid. If her kids didn't kick your ass, then Possible would. You don't fuck with anyone's kids, people, especially if the kids have done nothing wrong and their mom is the enemy. You all saw what she did to my place. Imagine if I had her kid instead of Electronique's." The whole table winced. "I suggest we lay low for a while, get ourselves back up to strength and then take GJ on," he said.

Everyone at the table looked at one another and slowly nodded. "It sounds like a good plan," Dian-Amy said reluctantly. The rest of the table nodded in agreement.

"Good," Hyperkinetic said. "I'm leaving now." He stood up, turned around and walked out the door, easily navigating the hallways back to his plane. As soon as he was in the air, the second-in-command got a call from The Boss.

"Yes, Boss?" he asked politely.

"Get a team together. I want Possible's sons up here by tomorrow," the voice on the line said.

"But Boss, in the meeting…" he began. His voice trailed off as he thought better of saying anything. In spite of what he had heard in the meeting from the COM-link, he knew it was suicidal to question the Boss.

"I know what I said," the Boss reminded him. "And it would be stupid for those morons to try it. I, however, want Kim Possible to come after me. My secret weapon is finally ready and it is time for my revenge."

"Understood, Boss," he said. "We'll have them by tomorrow afternoon."


	7. Can't Take My Eyes Off of You

Chapter 7 – Can't Take My Eyes Off of You

Kim tapped a few keys, frowning as she read the report on the alleged villains' summit that had happened the day before. According her various spies, all of the major players had been there, even Hyperkinetic, which was rare due to his well-known dislike of everyone. Kim scrolled down a little farther and her scowl grew deeper. She didn't like this at all. She opened up her messenger program to contact her section heads when a small icon started blinking in her system tray. At the same time, her communicator started chiming loudly. She paused in alarm, knowing what both of the alarms going off at the same time meant. She clicked the icon in tray and saw two small blips rapidly moving away from the university that Sean and Jon were studying at.

Maternal rage and fear sprang to life instantly, and she took a breath to calm herself. Her boys were doing what they had been taught to do in this situation. They had sent the alarm that they had been taken against their will and they had activated their tracking devices. Now, she had to do what she had been trained to do. She jumped out her chair and stormed out of her office, only to literally run into all of her section heads, her daughter, her daughter's best friend, her daughter's fiancé and the rest of Anne's newly-graduated officer class.

"We all got the alert," Vivian said by way of a greeting.

"Good," Kim said tersely. "So now all of you will get out of my way."

"We can't do that, Madame Director," Drakken said apologetically. "You know as well as we do that you aren't allowed to go on missions anymore."

"Like I give a flying fuck what the rules say," Kim responded through clenched teeth. "Now get out of my way." She glared at them all, but none of them backed down. They all stood there glaring at each other until Teresa suddenly coughed, alerting them all to her presence.

"I hate to intrude, but all of you need to come here and look at this," she said, looking intently at her computer monitor. Kim turned and everyone else gathered around her. Teresa, realizing that everyone couldn't crowd behind her desk, grabbed a remote from her top desk drawer and used it to turn on the screen behind her and tune it to a national news broadcast.

"This is Nina Johnson with the latest on the attack at State University," the news reporter was saying. "According to eyewitness reports, the attackers were very professional. They went to one specific building and took that over for the duration of their time on campus."

"And what did it appear they were after, Nina?" the desk anchor asked.

"From reports, it appears that they were here to abduct two students," Ms. Johnson replied.

"And do we know who those two student were?" the desk anchor pressed.

"The administration does, but they are not telling us until the families are notified," the reporter responded.

The phone rang, and everyone in the room jumped. Teresa picked it up gingerly and answered it. She listened intently before handing the phone off to Kim. Kim took it, listened for about two seconds and then abruptly cut whoever it was off. "We know," she said shortly, hanging up.

Kim turned her attention back to the television and her eyes narrowed as she saw the reporter's finger go up to her ear as she attempted to hear what was being said on her earbud. Kim wasn't really looking at the reporter, nor were any of the others clustered around Teresa's desk. They were all looking at orange-clad figure that was approaching her from her blindside.

The reporter gave a yelp as she was grabbed from behind and she struggled against Hyperkinetic's strong grip, but there was nothing she could do. "You will keep filming or you will die," Hyperkinetic told the cameraman. Looking into the camera, he addressed his intended audience, knowing that even if she wasn't watching it live, Kim Possible would see it soon enough. "Kim Possible!" he said in a loud, clear voice. "As I am sure you knew from the moment we captured them, we have both of your sons and we are taking them to our northern base. You, and whomever you decide to bring will follow them there. If no one comes, they will die; if you send your agents and you yourself do not come, they will die." He moved the hand that was restraining the reporter's arms to her neck, and using the arm around her waist for torque, acted as though he was going to break her neck. Instead, he just threw her to the ground and continued to look directly into the camera. "You will follow them by daybreak, or they will die like my brother did," he concluded, walking over to the camera and shutting off the transmission.

Teresa shut off the television and they all looked at one another soberly. Kim spoke first. "Sean and Jon were moving fairly fast the last time I was tracking them, and they should be near wherever Hyperkinetic is taking them," Kim said. "Wade, I want you to get me their coordinates within the hour."

Wade nodded. "Of course, Kim," he said.

Kim nodded. She looked around at her team. "Look," she said. "I know the rules say that as Director of GJ, I can't go on missions. Well, it is pretty damn obvious that it's me that Hyperkinetic wants, and it's me he is going to get. I don't want to hear anymore shit about how I am not going. While I'm gone, Dr. Porter is acting Director."

"Don't you think you should take someone with you?" Felix asked. "He just said you had to come; he didn't say you had to be alone."

Kim shook her head. "I need to do this alone," she said.

"Why? So you can get yourself killed?" Anne asked angrily. "It's obvious he wants to kill you. If you go alone, there is a good chance he will succeed."

"If I take someone with me, there is a chance they will be killed too," her mother replied. "I'm doing it alone."

"Madame Director, with all due respect, I agree with Anne. This is foolhardy," Vivian said. "At least take one of us. Any of your section heads would feel privileged to go with you." Five heads nodded.

"As would any of your officers," Tony added, and all of the younger generation nodded.

"I appreciate your loyalty and under different circumstances, I would gladly have anyone of you with me," Kim answered. "But I will not get any of you killed. I am leaving in an hour, alone, and that is my final order." She retreated into her office and shut the door.

The remaining people looked around. "Madame Director has taken a brief leave of her senses," Vivian concluded. "And as both acting Director and second in the chain of command, I hereby take control of GJ. As such, my first act as Director is to override her last order. You two," she said, pointing to Anne and Tony, "you will tail her and conceal yourselves on whatever transport she takes. You both have proved yourselves against this particular foe, and, more importantly, when Madame Director discovers we have disobeyed a direct order, you two are the most likely to make it out alive." Everyone smiled briefly before Vivian got serious again. "I want all five of you to come home safely, so I want the rest of you to help them and Madame Director out in whatever way you can," she said gravely. They all nodded. "All right, everyone dismissed," she concluded.

An hour later, Kim came out of her office, resplendent in a standard issue jumpsuit complete with the utility belt, an outfit that she hadn't worn in years. She was sick of sitting in her fucking office letting everyone else do the work. Hyperkinetic wanted her, and for the first time in way too many years that was exactly what he was going to get. She looked around expecting at least a token protest about her going on this mission alone, but everyone was curiously absent, even Teresa. Kim frowned; she could smell conspiracy on the wind.

She left the outer office to go to the hangar, only to almost run Ron over as she came out of the door. "Kim!" he said breathlessly. "I just heard it on the news. Is it the same Hyperkinetic? I want to go with you," he said in a rush.

"Yes, it's the same Hyperkinetic," Kim answered shortly, continuing to walk quickly down the hallway and forcing Ron to keep up with her. "And I'm sorry, Ron, but it's me he wants and I am going alone."

"That's suicide, Kim," Ron protested. "I have powers; I can help you get the boys out safely."

"Or you could get yourself killed," Kim retorted. "So I will tell you what I told my section heads and my officer corps: no."

"But Kim, they are my boys too," Ron pointed out.

"And I'll make sure they come back to you," Kim answered sincerely.

Ron put out a hand to stop her. "But what about you?" he asked quietly. "Who makes sure you come back?"

Kim sighed. "I'm one of the best fighters that ever lived, Ron," she said immodestly. "I'll make it back."

"If you want to," Ron observed astutely.

Kim didn't answer but walked through the door to the hangar, and here is where she found her missing section heads. "Please reconsider, Madame Director," Vivian requested.

"No," Kim said shortly. She went to one of the hovercraft and activated the control panel, causing the gangplank to extend down. Tony and Anne noted which one she was taking and slowly started creeping from their hideout towards it. Ron, who had come in after Kim and had a different angle of view, saw them while Kim remained oblivious. While not loving the fact that it was his daughter that was trying to sneak aboard, he was pleased to see others thought that Kim going alone was nuts. "Kim!" he called out, causing everyone in the room save two to turn towards him. Anne and Tony took the opportunity to board the craft and Anne smiled at him as she ran up the gangplank.

"No, Ron," Kim said with finality and boarded the craft. She pulled up the gangplank and took off before anyone could say anything else.

"Well done, Ron," Wade complimented him.

"Anyone else want a drink? I'm buying," Ron offered. The section heads shrugged and together they all walked out of the hangar.

After takeoff Kim adjusted her controls and checked the coordinates that Wade had uploaded into the computer. She did a double-take and frowned. She probably should have guessed that Hyperkinetic still had the Arctic hideout, but it was a place she really wanted to forget, so she hadn't checked to see if it was still in operation. It was a typical villain plot, though; lure the person you hated back to the place where you started hating them. It didn't matter that she hated the place, too. "Fucking Arctic," she cursed.

An unexpected clunk snapped Kim out of her reverie. She looked at her instruments, but her gauges and instrument panel showed nothing amiss. She switched to the outside sensors, but they too found nothing. Still curious, she flipped over to the inside sensors. Here something came up and it showed two heat sources concealed in the cargo hold. Kim sighed and tapped her communicator. "Will the agents, or more likely officers, that are in my cargo hold please come up to the cabin?" she requested in an authoritarian voice.

Anne and Tony looked at one another, grimaced and popped the hatch. They climbed out of the hold and wordlessly sat in the crew chairs beside and behind Kim. Anne, who was beside Kim, waited for her mother to speak. When she didn't, Anne decided to speak up. "We were ordered to accompany you, Madame Director," she explained.

"By whom?" Kim asked in a mild outrage. "My last, very specific order was that I would be going on this mission alone."

"Your last order was superseded by the acting Director, ma'am," Tony said respectfully.

Kim sighed. She should have known that Vivian would find a way around her order because Vivian was a good GJ officer, and any good officer would know it would be suicide for Kim to go on this mission by herself. "And why did she send you two? Because I wouldn't kill you in midair?" she asked wryly, her mood improving as she got over herself.

Anne smiled. "Pretty much," she admitted. "Dr. Porter also thought we had proved ourselves previously."

"So you both did, even if you weren't supposed to be on that mission and you got yourself captured," Kim said pointedly. Anne and Tony blushed. Anne hadn't known her mother knew about that, and Tony was just embarrassed she had walked into a trap. Kim saw their faces and chuckled at them.

The rest of the trip was uneventful and is spite of the driving December snow, Kim landed the plane exactly where they needed to be. They climbed into their cold weather gear, grabbed some for the boys and disembarked. The place hadn't changed at all in the intervening years, so Kim knew right where to find the door. Not caring about the cameras because Hyperkinetic had to know they were coming anyway, she blasted the lock with her pocket rifle and the door slid open.

It was warm in there, so as they hurriedly shed their gear, Kim gave Anne and Tony their orders. "Here, take this," she said, handing them the tracker that would lead them to the tracking devices on the boys. "You two use this to find Sean and Jon. Get them out, send me a chirp and come back here. If I am not back by five minutes after you get here, leave without me."

"And what are you going to do?" Anne challenged.

"I am going after the Boss," Kim said matter-of-factly. "The son of a bitch took my kids and made me come back to this fucking hideout. I owe him."

Anne nodded. She couldn't argue with those facts. "You know it's a trap, so be careful, Ma," she requested, hugging her impulsively. "We'll be waiting for you when you get back." Kim gave her brief smile and they separated, Anne and Tony going down one corridor and Kim going down the other.

The layout was the same, and henchmen were not-so-mysteriously absent, so Kim made it to the Boss' executive suite without a problem, which of course she was supposed to do if the trap she was walking into was supposed to work. She drew her rifle and carefully opened the door, all the while expecting some sort of weapons fire or other welcoming committee on the other side.

What she found surprised her. There were no guards and no weapons; there was nothing but Hyperkinetic sitting behind a desk. "It's been a long time, Madame Director," he said, and Kim was startled by the tone. There was no malice, no anger and no insanity in his voice; there was only a wistfulness that bordered on nostalgia. He smiled. "I see I've surprised you," he observed. "And I can see why. But before anything else happens, please accept my apology for my disloyalty to both you and GJ. It's not that I wanted to be a traitor; I just felt a greater loyalty to the Boss."

Kim blinked. Now this shit had crossed over from weird to utterly bizarre. "But you are the Boss," she pointed out, an eyebrow rising.

"Oh, that I were," Hyperkinetic said, almost cheerfully. "But contrary to popular belief, I am not." He pressed a button on his desk and the wall behind him revealed a secret door that slid open. "The Boss is waiting for you inside, Madame Director," he said politely. Kim looked at him briefly but then determinedly walked to and through the door.

Kim had no idea what to expect, but what she found on the other side was so unfathomable that her mind couldn't really process it, even though she saw her with her own eyes and could smell a scent that she hadn't smelled in over twenty years. "Hello, Kimmie," Shego said calmly.

Anne looked at the tracking device in her hand and wordlessly pointed to the left of the two hallways in front of them. Tony gave thumbs-up and they crept down the hallway keeping a sharp eye out for any guards or henchmen. They ran into a few, but quick dashes and leaps into the drop ceiling allowed them to get down to what appeared to be a cell block without being detected. It was a small jail; it only had a total of five cells and it was pretty obvious which cell held the twidiots, because that was the one that had two guards stationed in front of it. Anne looked at Tony and Tony broke out into a smile as she entered the room.

"Hey Gentlemen," she said, flashing her most flirtatious smile.

The guards looked stunned. Beautiful blue women didn't exactly show up down here very often. "Well, um, hey yourself," one of them offered.

The other one was a tad smarter. "Um, should you be down here?" he asked.

"Probably not," Tony admitted cheerfully. But here I am." Her smile got wider as she saw Anne using her distraction to sneak into the room. "And there you go," she added as she flipped over their heads and sent them crashing in to Anne who promptly knocked them out.

"Nice one, sis!" Sean and Jon called from the tiny window in their cell.

"Yeah, yeah," Anne said nonchalantly. "We can't take our eyes off of you, can we?" she ribbed them as she blasted off the lock and swung the door open to free them. The four of them bounded down the cell block to the door leading out and Anne sent a chirp message to her mother to signal their success. Just before they could go through it though, it swung shut and locked itself with an unknown mechanism.

"Shit," they all swore simultaneously.

"You seem shocked to see me, Kimmie," Shego taunted, getting up from the desk and coming around. Kim remained silent, not trusting herself to speak when her thoughts were this jumbled. Kim knew she had to start thinking rationally or she was never going to get out of here alive, so she went into her default mode of quiet observation in an attempt to get her thoughts in order. Shego looked almost exactly the same, Kim noticed, forcing herself to look at the details of the person and not the person. Shego did have a few more lines on her face and a prominent grey stripe in her dark green hair, meaning she probably wasn't a clone, Kim decided, taking the situation step by step. Thinking rationally got her mind back on track, and she actually started to feel like herself again.

"All this time and you have nothing to say to me, Kimmie?" Shego mocked. "Not even to ask why, after all this time I finally decided to reveal myself?" Kim stayed quiet. "Aw, come on, Pumpkin. Nothing?" Shego needled. "Not even how I managed to survive and turn into the Boss?" Kim did want to ask those questions, badly, but Shego seemed to be winding up for the villain-patented overblown exposition, so all she had to do was wait. She was right; after a few more moments of silence on Kim's part, Shego began to explain how this all came to be.

"Fine," Shego stated, clearly disappointed at Kim's seeming indifference. "I'll answer them even if you don't ask them," she pouted in the insane way that villains did. "To answer my first question, why after all this time did I choose to reveal that I was still alive?" she asked rhetorically. "Well, because my weapon is finally ready, of course," she said airily. She pressed a button on her desk and one of the walls rotated to reveal a machine and a control panel. She walked over to them. "This one was my first invention," she said, pointing to the capsular-looking machine. "It's a time machine powered by my plasma. But, as it turned out, it was worthless because I couldn't power it and use it at the same time. And besides, after a few years, I didn't want to go back anyway."

She moved over to the control panel, took a key from around her neck and inserted it, turning the lock counter-clockwise. The panel came to life and Kim noted some sort of targeting device and firing button, two things that indicated that it was some sort of weapon. Shego saw the recognition in Kim's eyes and laughed. "Big, Bad Madame Director knows what this is, now doesn't she?" she cackled. "You destroyed nothing when you destroyed my other factory; that one was the decoy. This, this is my masterpiece, a machine capable of taking my power and amplifying it to the point where it can destroy the world. And when the world is gone, Madame Director, your family, your mission and you will die right along with it and I will at last have my revenge."

Kim's brow contracted, but she still remained silent. Every indicator, the way she moved, the way she spoke, the way she smelled, told her mind that this was Shego, but in her heart she knew that Shego was long gone. The person standing before her was the Boss in all of her lunatic glory. "So what do you think, Kimmie?" Shego asked almost conversationally as she deactivated the control panel and put the key back around her neck.

"I think it's sad," Kim said bluntly, surprising Shego who had expected her to remain mute. "I didn't think it was possible, but you managed to survive only to become the thing you always loathed: the batshit-crazy villain out to destroy the world for no good reason but to satisfy the voices in your head."

Shego's face darkened. There was no way this smug bitch was going to insult her in her own office, not when she had worked so hard to make all of this come to pass. She growled and she lit her hands up, attacking Kim with a ferocious, maniacal rage. Kim figured it was coming and was ready for the attack, blocking Shego's strikes and making some of her own.

Shego grunted as Kim's heel connected with her side and she slashed out, tearing Kim's uniform and putting deep gouges into Kim's right arm. Kim jumped back at the injury and Shego pressed her attack, using her plasma to occupy Kim while her claws tried to do their damage. Kim caught wise to this and deflected her attempts by using her legs to take Shego's legs out from under her. Shego dragged Kim down with her, and soon they were engaged in a deadly wrestling match.

They fought, clawed and struck at one another, both of them trying to inflict twenty years' worth of pain on the other. Sensing they were fighting to a standstill, Kim broke free and jumped up, trying to gain some leverage of some sort. It turned out to be a fatal mistake, as Shego quickly followed her and Kim found herself with her back up against the wall and nowhere to go. Shego pinned her within a matter of seconds, and scowling, lit up her right hand, bringing it within centimeters of Kim's face.

Kim watched the advancing plasma, hoping that Shego's desire to have Kim watch the triumph of her weapon's success might keep her alive for a few minutes longer. Her earbud suddenly chirped, and quite involuntarily, she smiled, proud of her daughter and happy that her boys were safe.

The chirp was loud enough and the two of them were close enough that Shego heard it too, and when Kim smiled, she easily figured out what it was. "So you think your little brats are safe, do you?" she asked contemptuously as her plasma stopped. "I expected you to go there first. The room is booby-trapped and they will all be recaptured within minutes."

"They won't be captured, at least not for long," Kim disagreed. "Anne is too good and too talented to be held for long."

"Too talented? The buffoon's daughter?" Shego laughed derisively.

"She's my daughter," Kim corrected.

"Doesn't matter," Shego said dismissively. "You are going to lose this time, too." She let Kim go and contacted the guards that were on their way to the cell block. "After you have captured them, bring them up here. I have something special for them," she ordered, and Kim wasn't surprised to see her using what looked to be a voice-changing communicator.

"Anne will never make it up here," Kim said calmly, peeling her back off the wall.

"Oh, but she will, and when she does, I'll enjoy it when you watch her die," Shego growled.

"You'll never discharge that weapon," Kim promised.

"Oh, she's not going to die like the rest of you," Shego informed Kim. "Like I told the guards, I have something special in mind for her."

"Leave my daughter alone or you will regret it," Kim warned, her anger rising with the sudden and very specific threat against her daughter.

"I sincerely doubt it," Shego spat. "Do you know how long I've waited for this? How many times I've replayed the memory of leaving the hospital after a year of excruciating recovery only to come home to find you with that brat in diapers playing house with Stoppable? She wasn't a newborn when I got back, Kimmie. What did you do, fuck him the night I died?"

Shego never saw it coming. A vicious right cross landed squarely on her jaw and sent her stumbling over one of her chairs. She could feel the blood trickling down the right corner of her mouth and she absentmindedly put a finger to it, not surprised when it came back with a smear of green on it. She looked up a bit dazed, and saw Kim glowering over her in what could only be rage. "You have no right to judge me," Kim said, her voice low and calm. "And if you are using Anne as your excuse for all of this, you are stupid as well as crazy."

Shego, having recovered from the blow, growled and launched herself at Kim. Kim, pumped up by rage, took the attack in stride and used her anger to her advantage. She dodged all of Shego's blows and parried all of her attacks. She landed good punches of her own, and soon it became clear that Kim was winning.

Suddenly, a voice cut through the fighting. "We have the prisoners and the GJ agents, Boss," the henchman said.

"Are they fully subdued?" Shego asked, throwing Kim off.

"Beaten and shackled in standard-issue cuffs, sir," the henchman replied.

"And where are you now?" Shego asked.

"Still in the cell block," the henchman answered. "They put up a hell of a fight, but we were finally able to get the GJ agents to cooperate after we recaptured the twins."

"Excellent. Bring them up here," Shego ordered, cutting off the transmission.

While she was distracted, Kim contacted Anne. "You have to get out of there, Annie," Kim said softly. "Use whatever force you have to." She smiled when she got a low whistle in a confirmatory response.

"That won't help, you know," Shego cut in having overheard. She pushed a couple of buttons and a security monitor turned on behind her, showing Anne, Tony and the twins shackled with the backs of the twenty guards surrounding them just visible in the camera.

"Anne will get them out of there," Kim said with quiet confidence.

"Open your eyes, Kimmie," Shego taunted. "She's captured and in shackles."

"She has extraordinary genetics," Kim said immodestly. "So, she is going to get free; then, she will free everyone else at which point, they will kick all of your collective asses."

Shego frowned. Kim was being far too confident for it to be a bluff. She turned her attention to the monitor and carefully watched the silent broadcast.

Anne smirked when she got her mother's communiqué. She was thinking about it, but she was a little hesitant as always and it was nice to get confirmation from the top. She waited briefly until the guards distracted themselves by prepping to take them out of the cell block and then sidled up to Tony and her brothers. "Get as far away from me as you can," she told them, her smirk reforming. The others joined her, knowing what was coming next.

Shego's brow furrowed when Anne smirked. Nah, it couldn't be, she decided, her face relaxing. She kept watching and without warning, Anne's shackles fell off the wrists that were bound behind her back and the chains fell to the floor. Anne smiled and Shego's eyes widened.

"Put your hands up!" the guard ordered, realizing that Anne had inexplicably freed herself when her chains clattered to the floor. Anne complied by slowly bringing her hands up until they were right in front of her face, palm side out. The guard glared at her and ordered one of his men to put more cuffs on her. The smirk returned, and Anne turned her hands around and closed them up into fists. Green plasma erupted from her clenched hands and the guards took a step back. Anne used the space to extend her hands outward, slashing through the shackles that held Tony and the boys. Their chains fell off and all of them smirked. The guards swallowed nervously and took another step back.

Shego turned away from watching her guards get pummeled to see Kim standing wordlessly by the door. "It can't be, Kim," Shego protested, and for the first time, Kim saw something that looked like sanity in her eyes.

"I was two months' pregnant when you died," Kim said quietly. "The only person I've ever been with besides you is Ron, and the last time I had sex with him before you and I got started was a week before you lured me to the Caribbean. The next time I had sex with him was on our wedding night, which was when Anne was over a year old. She's got your powers, your eyes and your smile. Congratulations, it's a girl."

"But, how?" Shego asked, bewildered.

"I don't know," Kim said truthfully. "But when I lost you, I didn't care all that much."

Shego sat down in her chair, clearly stunned that Kim almost felt sorry for her. "Almost" was the key word, however, as Kim picked the Boss of the Year award off her desk and clocked Shego on the back of the head with it. Shego slumped forward onto her desk and Kim hurried for the exit. She had just gotten the door open when she remembered something. She went back to Shego and lifted her up, causing her unconscious body to recline back in her chair. Kim grasped the key that was around Shego's neck and lifted it free, placing it around her own neck for safe keeping.

She turned to leave, but then turned back. She hesitantly reached out and her fingertips just grazed Shego's pale and still-soft cheek. With the danger gone, Kim could revert back to stunned disbelief, and she just looked Shego over, hesitant to believe even with all that had just happened. She leaned over and kissed Shego softly on the forehead. "I'm sorry we came to this, love; I guess I'm to blame for this too," she whispered, caressing her cheek one more time before bolting out the door.

She met up with her kids and her future kid-in-law at the appointed place. After giving Sean and Jon hugs and assuring them that her arm wasn't that bad, she shoved snowsuits at them all and they all got dressed. Confident they wouldn't freeze, they scurried to the hovercraft and took off before Hench-co could retaliate.

Hench-co's Arctic Headquarters – About 2 hours later

Shego blinked as her eyed unwillingly opened. She spotted Hyperkinetic sitting in on of her office chairs and she directed her attention to him. "DD, what the fuck happened?" she asked.

Dwight David Reauxwaive, better known as DD to the Boss and Hyperkinetic to the rest of the world, shrugged. "Well, Boss, you pissed off Kim Possible, she came, brought reinforcements and between all five of them, they kicked our collective ass," he summarized. Normally he wouldn't have spoken to the Boss like that, at least not any time in the last five years, but she had called him DD, which she rarely did anymore, and she seemed, well, less crazy.

"Yeah, that's what I thought I remembered," Shego said sluggishly. She sat up and instantly knew that had been a bad idea. She reached for her head and felt a huge lump up there, wincing when she touched it. "Damn, that woman can still throw a punch and pack a wallop," she grumbled, testing her jaw as she felt her head.

"So what are our plans now, Boss?" DD asked. "Possible took the key for the plasma amplifier with her, so until we get it back, we are SOL with that plan."

"We don't have an extra key?" Shego questioned.

"You didn't want one, Boss," DD reminded her. "You wanted to be the only one who had any control over it."

"Oh, right," Shego answered. She eased her head back onto her chair. She closed her eyes for a few moments before cracking an eye and looking at DD. "Have I really been that bat-shit crazy?" she asked, the stupidity of having one key to anything forcing her to recall Kim's words.

"Yeah, for about five years," DD confirmed.

"And you didn't do anything to stop me?" she asked quizzically.

"You would have killed me," DD answered truthfully. Shego frowned and DD allowed himself to hope. She probably wasn't all back yet, but he had seen more glimpses of the real Shego in this conversation than he had in years. He was actually seeing the extraordinary, charismatic woman he had abandoned GJ to follow, not the megalomaniac she had become.

"I'm sorry, DD," she apologized. "I had no idea that I'd slipped that far. I guess too many years cursing your fate and plotting revenge can make you a little insane." She wanted to shake her head at the irony but didn't think it was wise to attempt it. "And now I find out that my reason for revenge never even existed."

"Ah, yes, I came into the latter part of the show," DD said wryly. "Should I offer my congratulations, Boss?"

Shego glared at him. "I think I liked you better cowed. You were less sarcastic," she grumbled. "So, back to your question, DD: what do we do now?" she asked almost wistfully.

"Well, Boss, it seems to me you have two choices," DD stated. "One, you can hold onto your insane plot for revenge and order some of us to go after Possible and get the key back, except of course this time you will have to think up some other excuse, for instance: 'even though the kid is mine, she still married the buffoon and she should have waited' or something like that. Or, two, you can leave headquarters for the first time in five years, track Possible down yourself and beg forgiveness for thinking she had betrayed you, plotting against her family and trying to destroy the world."

"Yeah, like she'd actually forgive me," Shego snorted. "And when did you get so logical?"

"You pay me to act crazy; it doesn't mean I am," DD pointed out. "And I think she would."

"What makes you so sure?" Shego asked.

"Well, when I was trying to figure out how and when you were knocked unconscious, I ran the security tapes from the camera in my office," he explained.

"And?" Shego prompted.

"The door inadvertently got left open and this is what the camera managed to capture," he finished. He logged into her computer and called up the proper file from the security camera. Shego watched pensively as the door opened, Kim turned back and the key got stolen. More importantly, she saw the caresses and the gentle kiss on her forehead.

"DD?" she said after the pertinent segment had finished.

"Yeah, Boss?" he inquired.

"Get my plane ready," she ordered.


	8. One Night Only

Chapter 8 – One Night Only

Kim set the hovercraft down in the hangar, unsurprised to see a small knot of people clustered around the landing pad. She turned off the controls, opened the door and extended the gangplank, causing the people on the outside to gather around closer and allowing her boys to bail. They were spotted by their anxiously-waiting father, and Ron came rushing over and wrapped them both in bone-bruising hugs, which in turn caused them both to squirm around in teenage embarrassment. "It's okay, Dad," they both said in unison. "Anne kicked their asses and we all got out of there," Jon finished.

"All of you?" Ron clarified, only seeing Anne and Tony in the doorway. "Where's your mother?"

"I'm right here, Ron," Kim answered as she ducked her head and came out of the craft right behind Anne and Tony. Drakken broke out into a wide smile and went to greet his offspring while Anne came over and gave her dad a hug. Ron hugged her back and looked at his ex-wife. He didn't say anything at first, but his relief that his daughter, his sons and Kim had all come back was evident on his face.

"Thanks for getting them back," Ron said finally. "And thank you for coming back with them."

Kim smiled and there was a touch of irony in it. If her kids hadn't been in danger and Shego had been the slightest bit sane, she probably wouldn't have. "You're welcome," she replied. "But Anne did most of the work."

"If that's the case, Madame Director, why is your uniform torn and your upper arm deeply scratched and bleeding?" Vivian inquired pointedly.

"Mom went after the Boss!" the twins announced proudly and her section heads looked at her with a mix of alarm and awe.

"You went after the Boss and all you came away with was some scratches?" Felix asked in unabashed admiration.

"Oh, I didn't quite get away with that little damage," Kim said hurriedly, embarrassed. "I'm sure I'll be sore in the morning." And probably depressed, she thought internally. Talk of the Boss reminded her of something, though, and she took the amplifier key from around her neck and handed it to Justine. "Here," she said. "This is hopefully the one and only key to Hench-co's real doomsday device. Put it in the most secure location we have," she requested.

Justine nodded before asking a follow-up question. "Real doomsday device?" she asked.

"The one we destroyed was a decoy, or so the Boss informed me," Kim replied and everyone in the group grimaced.

"Are we headed back to the conference room for debriefing and discussion?" Drakken asked, mindful of the situation's potential urgency.

"No," Kim stated, surprising everyone. "I've had a very long day and I would really just like to go home. Let's schedule a staff meeting for tomorrow at 10AM."

Everyone nodded, but there were more than a few looks of concern passed between everyone besides Kim present. Madame Director was very much a do-it-now person regardless of fatigue level, and she never scheduled a meeting for the next morning unless it was morning already. All of them wanted to call her on it, but ultimately it was only Wade that ended up having the courage. "Um, Madame Director?" he asked hesitantly. "Is everything okay? Or is there something you're not telling us like you are more seriously injured than you are letting on?"

"No," Kim said shortly. "The scratches and some bruises are the extent of my injuries." Her section heads, her kids and Ron still didn't look convinced. She sighed. "I'm just tired and right now I just really want to go home, okay?" she challenged.

"Of course, Madame Director," Vivian said immediately, surprised that Madame Director was being so candid. "I'm still technically Acting Director now, anyway. Go home and get some rest and we'll see you tomorrow. Everyone else, dismissed." The rest of the section heads got her drift and everyone but Ron, Kim and their three kids scattered.

"Will you take the boys home, Ron?" Kim asked.

"Of course, Kim," Ron answered. He handed Sean his car keys. "Go get the car warmed up, guys," he requested, and the twins took the hint.

"Sure thing, Dad," they replied in unison and left the hangar.

"I should go see if Tony is okay," Anne said abruptly, picking up on her dad's vibe. "I'll see you tomorrow, Ma," she said, giving her a quick hug before she too left the hangar.

Kim and Ron watched her go, and when they were alone, Ron turned to Kim. "What's really wrong, Kim?" he asked, knowing her too well to believe her fatigue excuse.

Kim sighed. "The Boss wasn't the person I expected, Ron," she said quietly. "And I have a feeling that it is going to cause a lot of problems for all of us."

Ron reached out and took a hold of Kim's right arm. He studied the scratches briefly and his nimble mind started to put it together. "These look like claw marks," he observed.

"I don't want to talk about it, Ron," Kim snapped, forestalling him.

"Fair enough," Ron answered calmly. "But after I take the boys home, do you want me to come over so you can have someone to be there and not talk with?"

Kim shook her head. She was touched that he'd made the offer, but she had no desire to take him up on it. "Thank you, but no thank you, Ron," she said sincerely. "I'd really just rather be alone right now."

"Okay," Ron agreed. "But call me if you need me."

"I will," Kim promised. Ron smiled, kissed her on the forehead and left the hangar. Kim looked watched him go and then left the hangar herself. She took a quick detour to pick up her keys and went home, breathing a sigh of relief when at last she was parked in the driveway,

She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she didn't notice the presence of a shadowy figure that was tracking her movements from her car to the front door. After Kim had gone in, Shego abandoned the bushes in the parkway and slowly climbed the hill to Kim's hilltop mansion. There was plenty of flora for cover and she concealed herself in leaves, branches and darkness until she reached the house. The house was huge and the bottom half seemed to be made up entirely of windows, which made Kim and cover hard to find. She clambered up a pine tree on one side of the giant window and peeked in. Ah, this was the bottom floor, she discovered, seeing what appeared to be a living room with a kitchen behind it. She continued to scale the tree, stopping when she made it to a window. She looked in, but this obviously wasn't Kim's room. The overly-large bunk beds and the pictures of scantily-clad women on the walls indicated this was Kim's teenaged sons' room. She swung to another tree and slowly made a circuit of the house by hopping from tree to tree until she found what had to be the master bedroom. She hesitated, and she argued with herself about going in or staying safely concealed in the snowy and blessedly lush and evergreen needles of the pine tree. Kim came suddenly into the room and just as quickly, staying in the tree seemed just fine. Shego had no idea of what she should do or say, so if she stayed out here, she could watch and not have to do anything.

Kim called out for lights as she came into the room and blinked distractedly as they came on. There was so much going on in her head that she was barely taking notice of anything that was going on around her, so even though she had called for them, the lights coming on was a surprise. She shook her head and went for the bed, grabbing her pajamas from underneath her pillow. They were the same as always: a tank-top and because it was winter, flannel pajama bottoms. Having to wear a neck-high, long-sleeved uniform to work every day made her wear as little as she could get away with when she went to bed. She was tempted for a second to go back downstairs and grab something to drink, but realizing how far she would have to go, Kim decided it wasn't worth it. She peeled back the covers and got into bed, grabbing Ron's unused pillow to wrap herself around as she turned on her side and looked out the window.

She sighed, her mind trying to process it all. And how the fuck was she supposed to do that, she wondered. Shego was alive. The woman that she loved, the woman she had jilted a wonderful man for, the woman she had thought lost to her forever, the woman she had tried so desperately to forget was alive. And, she was evil, or at the very least, crazy. Really, how in the fuck were you supposed to process something like that, she asked herself. She let go of the pillow and threw it towards the window in frustration.

Shego saw the pillow coming and she instinctively flinched as it hit the glass a few feet away from her. Shit, she thought, as her movement alerted Kim to the fact that something alive was outside her window. She watched Kim get up and move to the window and she knew she should get the hell out of there and do it now, but instead she remained frozen, transfixed by the sight of the woman she had never really stopped being in love with, even when her misplaced anger had tried to turn that love into hate.

Kim opened the window and peered out into the darkness. She saw the figure in the tree and she went instantly on alert. "Show yourself!" she barked, and waited impatiently as the figure carefully balanced on the branch and came closer. When the light from the window revealed who it was, a part of Kim relaxed only to have another part seize up in anxiety. "What are you doing here?" she demanded, not knowing which version of Shego she was dealing with.

"Um, everyone knows where you live and I figured you had already left the office?" Shego offered hurriedly, saying the first thing that came to her mind.

Kim's eyebrow rose at the unexpected response; that kind of answer sounded like her Shego, not the Boss, but it could also be a trick. "I didn't mean 'here' as in my house," she said. "I meant 'here' as in why did you want to see me."

"Oh," Shego said, a little embarrassed. "Um, I wanted to talk to you," she said.

"About what?" Kim retorted, her temper coming to the surface. "You had twenty years to look me up to talk. What's so important now?"

"A lot of things," Shego answered uncomfortably. "Listen, I know it makes no sense for you, but could I please get off this branch and come in? It's cold out here and I promise that I won't do anything," she pleaded, her discomfort growing as the cold, her precarious balance and Kim's disapproval all joined forces against her.

Kim sighed sharply. She was still leery, but Shego seemed okay, and she was confident she could take her out if she wasn't. She stepped away from the window. "All right, but if you try anything, you won't make it out of here alive," she warned.

Shego nodded and jumped from the branch through the window, landing on Kim's floor with a soft roll. Kim closed the window, and retreated to her bed. Shego grabbed the dresser bench and turned it to face Kim, fidgeting uncomfortably when Kim's face narrowed into a glare. "Um, I came to apologize…" she began.

"For what?" Kim asked, cutting her off angrily. "Kidnapping my boys, threatening my daughter's life, or plotting to destroy the world? Or how about the murders of dozens of my officers at the hands of the Syndicate and Hench-co? Or better yet, how about you apologize for all of the people who never signed up to be crime fighters but got killed just because they were in the way of your stupid little fantasy of getting revenge on me?"

Shego got up and came over to Kim, her face turning angry. "Don't you dare get sanctimonious with me," she replied. "Do you know how it feels to have the one person who means everything to you betray and abandon you?"

"Well, I didn't, at least not until this afternoon," Kim retorted. "Until then, I only had to face living without the person who meant everything to me for the rest of my life and raising her daughter without her."

Kim's words hit Shego like a physical blow, and she stopped where she was, the anger disappearing from her face as guilt and regret swept over her. She knelt by Kim's bed and bowed her head. "I know you probably can't forgive me, but I'm so sorry, Princess," she whispered.

Kim looked at her, and the sight of Shego so close and so contrite brought back memories of the dreams and fantasies she'd had just after Shego had died, the ones where she'd promised to give up damn near anything if she could just have Shego back. "Just answer me one question, Shego," Kim requested, and much to her surprise, she felt tears coming down her cheeks as emotion finally won out over logic. "Just tell me if this is real, or if this is the part where I wake up and you're not the one beside me."

Shego looked up and saw the tears running down Kim's cheeks. It was only then that she finally realized that Kim had never stopped loving her and their relationship had upended Kim's life as badly as it had hers. Kim hadn't forgotten her and moved on to her perfect little life; under the veneer of marriage and career, she was as broken as Shego herself. Shego didn't know what to say, so she just did what came naturally. She got up off her knees and sat gently on the side of the bed, reaching out with her right hand to wipe away Kim's tears. Her thumb just grazed Kim's bottom lip, and on impulse, but with the hesitancy of someone who wasn't quite sure if she was allowed to do this anymore, she gently kissed Kim on the lips.

The kiss was only meant to be comforting; Shego had no ambitions or ulterior motives. But as was typical for them, the kiss grew into something more. Kim's hands tangled themselves in Shego's thick collar-length hair and drew her closer so that Shego found herself half-sitting and half-laying on top of Kim. Their mouths opened and the kiss deepened, both of them reliving memories and sensations that they had believed to be lost. Only when they had to pause for breath did the kiss break, and they stilled for a moment, their chests meshed together as they shared the same breath. It was only a temporary respite, though, as their kiss resumed and their hands started to grab for clothing.

Kim was only dressed in her pajamas and it took Shego only seconds to rid her of her tank top, exposing Kim's unfettered breasts and bare stomach, and the temptation of that bare flesh coaxed Shego away from Kim's mouth. She shifted herself so that she was straddling Kim and could get a better look. Her fingers reached out to touch and they traced a path around Kim's breasts, down to her torso and back up to her breasts. From time to time she could feel scarred skin under her fingertips; some of them she remembered but some of them were new, a testament to the dangerous life Kim led. Kim gasped as Shego's fingers came back in contact with more sensitive flesh, and Shego smiled, lowering her mouth to let it follow where her fingers were tracing. Kim gasped again, and her fingers re-tangled themselves in Shego's hair as Shego's mouth started to explore. Shego kept up her gentle pressure, alternating from one side to the next until Kim cried out, the fingers in her hair tightened, and Kim began to shudder underneath her.

Shego lifted her mouth, letting Kim recover before continuing her traverse downward. When Kim's breathing slowed just a little, she put her mouth back down, and her hands reached for Kim's flannel pajama bottoms, only to have the fingers still entwined in her hair prevent her from doing what she wanted to. Instead, Kim used them to gently lift Shego's mouth back to hers, kissing her deeply as she flipped Shego over and her hands reached for the zipper on Shego's jumpsuit.

Shego took exception to this turn of events and tried to finish what she had started by flipping Kim back over. Kim countered her move, and soon an erotically-charged wrestling match started to take place. Shego was stronger, but Kim was more determined, and ultimately Kim claimed victory and had Shego pinned beneath her. Kim took the opportunity to completely divest Shego of her clothing and remove the remainder of her own nightwear. Shego tried again to change their positions, but Kim wouldn't let her, instead using her mouth and wandering fingers to first lull Shego into a pleasure-filled complacency and then coax her into a thought-robbing euphoria. Kim's fingers and mouth kept up their steady rhythm, stopping only when Shego screamed out Kim's name and she started to tremble.

Kim withdrew her fingers and reached up to kiss her. Shego kissed her back, hard, and flipped Kim over. She had waited far too long to touch Kim, to taste her, and there was no way she would waste a single moment of the night they had somehow gotten back. This time her mouth was allowed to travel where it wanted to go, and she nearly cried at that first sweet taste. It triggered so many memories and so many regrets, but she refused to give them purchase. Now was not the time. Now was the time to take back what was hers and leave the memories behind.

Neither one wanted the night to end, and in the end, it was only sheer exhaustion that forced them to suspend their activities, at least for a while. Shego curled herself around Kim and Kim settled back against her body. Neither one slept; both of them were too absorbed with their own thoughts to do that, but each thought that was what the other was doing. Kim relaxed and a smile briefly came over her face as she contemplated where she was, but that smile turned into a pensive frown as she continued to think about it. How in the hell had it turned out like this again, she wondered. Every single time in her life when the situation dictated something else, she had chosen Shego; more specifically, she had chosen sex with Shego.

She sighed softly, thinking about all the times that had come before. When she was seventeen and Shego had come to her room apologizing for invading her privacy, instead of being angry or upset, or even remembering at that point they were still technically enemies, she had invited her in, forgiven her and lost her virginity. Four years later, when she stupidly fell into Shego's trap when she was attempting to save Shego's wedding, instead of being pissed that Shego had laid the trap or pissed that Shego had led Drakken on or more importantly, pissed that Shego was forcing her to choose between her and Ron, she'd ended up pinned against a wall and then naked in Shego's bed for a week. And of course, that little adventure had resulted in a summer of cheating on Ron, a fall of bickering and make-up sex and a winter of despair and an unexpected pregnancy.

All that paled in comparison to now, though. The counts against Shego were almost too many to mention: letting Kim think she was dead for twenty years, plotting to destroy the world, threatening her kids, breaking up her marriage, causing death or injury to her agents. All of it Shego was guilty of, yet one kiss and here they were. At the very least Shego should have given her some explanation of how she was alive, but Shego hadn't told her a thing. And still, here they were. Kim sighed loudly, and Shego, surprised she was still awake and concerned about the sigh, immediately turned Kim to face her.

"What's wrong?" she asked plaintively, seeing the look on Kim's face. "Did you just realize you and I are supposed to be enemies and now you are going to arrest me or kick me out and tell me never to come back again?"

Kim blinked. A lot must be showing on her face, she realized. "Kind of," she admitted. Shego nodded and started to get up. Kim reached out and drew her back in. "But mostly I was thinking about how you and I always end up in this situation regardless of the circumstances or the need to talk," she amended.

"Which situation?" Shego inquired. "Naked?" Kim nodded resignedly. Shego shrugged. "Well, we always were more of a 'fuck first, talk later' kind of couple, Princess," she pointed out.

Kim looked at her, rolled her eyes and sat up, dislodging Shego as she rested her head on her sheet-covered knees. It was a completely crass way of putting it, but damn if it wasn't also completely apt. "You're right," she admitted. "So what do you want to talk about?"

Shego sat up. She was hoping that they would get a chance to talk and on the plane, there was one topic of conversation that she wanted to bring up more than any other. "Um, well, I know you probably want to hear about how I'm not dead," she guessed and Kim's expression confirmed it. "But if you wouldn't mind, I'd rather hear about Anne first, and then I'll explain the being alive and the crazy and all that," she offered, and she looked so hopeful that Kim couldn't refuse her.

"Okay," Kim agreed. "But then we talk about you." Shego nodded, and Kim climbed out of bed, retrieving an 8x10 picture frame off of the vanity across the room. She hopped back into bed and used Shego as back support, forcing Shego to peer over her shoulder. She pushed a few buttons and accessed the frame's menu, scrolling back to and displaying the very first picture. "What would you like to know?" she asked holding up the frame that showed a red-faced newborn Anne.

Shego looked over Kim's shoulder at the picture and her fingers reached out to trace the image. "When did you know she was mine?" she asked, still not quite believing it.

"I knew for sure the first time she smiled," Kim answered truthfully, advancing the frame and showing Shego another picture. "Up until that point, I had tried to think of any other explanation that would be more logical than you being her other parent, but when she smiled, there was just no way she wasn't yours."

"How did we do it?" Shego asked, intrigued but apprehensive.

"I'm still not sure," Kim replied. "When Mom told me I was pregnant and the only possibility was you, I tried to convince myself there had been one night where something was different. Looking back, though, I think I was full of shit."

"So, you don't know," Shego concluded.

"Nope," Kim confirmed. "Mom offered to try to find out for me, and being Anne's grandma, I know she would have treated Anne with the utmost care. I wasn't going to let my daughter be a guinea pig, though, so I said no. I did let her do a DNA test, though."

"And?" Shego prompted.

"It confirmed what I already knew," Kim answered. "My mom tested everyone she thought could be a potential father: Ron, Wade, Felix and Josh. She even went to Go City and got samples from your brothers and took samples from the Tweebs to make sure it wasn't simple IVF. The results showed that Team Go and the Tweebs were obviously related, but only you and I were perfect matches."

"So your mom obviously knew Anne was mine," Shego reasoned.

"Yeah, but the DNA test was just the last piece of evidence for her," Kim said. "She knew me well enough to know that I was hiding something about Anne and after a little investigation, she put two and two together."

"And she didn't freak out?" Shego asked.

"Eh, she's a scientist," Kim replied. "If the experiment works, there has to be a reason why. Hers was that you weren't a normal female and that your uniqueness gave me Anne. She did want to know a few more of the specifics, but when I said no, that was good enough for her."

"Hm," Shego commented. "Did anyone else know?" she asked.

"Ron," Kim said promptly. "He knew from the beginning. Wade and Monique figured it out when Anne got really mad at Ernie one time when she was five and set fire to their curtains."

"Ernie?" Shego inquired.

"Wade and Monique's son," Kim explained. "He and Anne have been best friends since they could toddle." She pressed a button on the frame and advanced the pictures, stopping at the one from her wedding that showed Ernie and Anne coming up the aisle together. Shego smiled and took the frame from Kim to get a better look.

When she was done, she handed the frame back to Kim. "No one else figured it out?" she asked.

"How could they?" Kim responded. "Not a whole lot of people knew we were a couple and even those that did figured she was Ron's." She reached up and gingerly touched the bruised jaw line she had walloped earlier. "I'm sorry for that," she apologized. "I've had to live with that assumption for a lot of years, and I guess hearing it from you kind of pissed me off."

"Kind of?" Shego asked incredulously, coming out from behind Kim to lie beside her. "You belted me halfway across the room."

Kim blushed. "Anyway, the only obvious clues were her eyes, her smile and her powers. I have green eyes, too, so everyone assumed she got them from me, since you hardly ever smiled, I was the only one who knew what the smile looked like, and no one outside those five ever saw her powers, so no until she was seventeen, those guys were about it," she concluded. "But anyway, on with her childhood." She clicked the frame and the pictures started to transition showing Anne's progress from a toddler to a little girl ready for kindergarten. "It was about here that her powers started to show themselves," Kim said, stopping the progression. "If she got upset, which considering how laid back Anne was, was rare, her hands would start glowing green. If she was really pissed off, she could produce the plasma, as Wade and Monique found out."

"What did Ernie do to piss her off so badly?" Shego asked, amused.

"He said his new sister was better than her twin brothers," Kim remembered with a smile. "Anne adored them when they were little. After they got out of diapers, they were the Twidiots."

"I see," Shego said. It figured her kid would be protective of her own.

"Anyway," Kim continued, "Anne and Ernie made up the next day, but I had some explaining to do. Wade and Monique were shocked, but they loved Anne and they got over it pretty quickly." She clicked the frame and the slideshow continued. Shego saw Anne progress from five to thirteen before Kim stopped the show again. "Her Bat Mitzvah," she explained, and activated the video. Shego watched the video, and while it made her smile to see Anne's introduction into womanhood, it saddened her that she hadn't been there. "This was about the time she learned to control her powers," Kim said, interrupting her thoughts. "But, being a typical teenager, she didn't want to be different, so she rarely used them." Kim smiled wryly. "In fact, she only seemed to use them to get into some sort of trouble," she said.

"Like?" Shego asked, curious.

"Pranks mostly," Kim answered. "Often involving Conchita Senior." Shego smiled. That sounded like her kid.

The video stopped and the slide show progressed to high school, and Shego couldn't help but notice the junior prom picture with Ernie. "So are they together now?" she asked.

"Not as a couple, no," Kim replied, pausing the show. She manually clicked to the next two pictures, one showing Ernie with his boyfriend and Anne with her girlfriend. "Ernie was with Mark before he and Anne went to prom; amazingly, they're still together and getting married next summer."

"And Anne?" Shego asked speculatively.

"She was with Gretchen until the end of the summer," Kim recalled. "Then came Alex, Felix and Justine's son. They were together for a while but broke up right before college. Next was Stacy, but that only lasted for a couple of months before the parade of Michael, Cathy, Ben, Glenn, Sharon came by. Craig was her longest college relationship, but after a year or so, that one fizzled just before they graduated."

Shego blinked. "And now?" she asked apprehensively.

"Tony, but we'll get to that," Kim said. She let the slideshow continue until it came to a picture of Anne in a graduation robe. "This was her high school graduation. She was valedictorian of her class, captain of the cheerleading squad, head of the debate team and a volunteer at a special needs kids' camp," Kim said, pointing to all of her various decorations. Shego rolled her eyes. "She's my kid too, you know," Kim reminded her. She indicated the ring that Anne was wearing in the photo. "I gave her my engagement ring from you for her graduation," she said, her voice growing a little thick. "I lied and told her it was Nana's, but I wanted her to have something of yours."

"So Anne doesn't know," Shego realized, looking at Kim intently.

Kim wondered when they were going to get to this. "No," she answered. "Ron has always been her dad and I never wanted to take that away from either of them. I even destroyed all record of you in the GJ computers so she wouldn't find out by accident."

Shego took the frame from Kim and started scrolling back through the pictures, noticing Ron for the first time. He was in every picture practically, his goofy grin randomly showing up in almost every picture. She hated him and was grateful to him all the same time. "Yeah, Ron turned out to be a good guy," she allowed, her voice gruff.

"He is," Kim agreed. "It was a pity I had to divorce him because I never got over you."

"You're divorced?" Shego asked, bewildered; it suddenly made sense why Ron wasn't home.

"Yeah, but we're not talking about that; we are talking about Anne," Kim said curtly, taking the frame back. She flipped a few more slides. "After high school, she went to college at State, interned here at GJ in the summer, and graduated summa cum laude. When she started here, all of my section heads finally found out about her powers. Most of them thought they were Ron's powers, but the two who had actually known you, Drakken and Vivian, knew exactly whose they were." She clicked one last time to show a final picture. "And finally, here is Tony, Anne's fiancé," she concluded, showing a recent picture of Anne and Tony together.

Shego stared at it. "That's a girl," she said, surprised. She looked more closely. "That's Drew and Electronique's girl," she realized. "You mean Connie Senior wasn't just being a bitch?" she asked.

Kim really had no idea what she was talking about, but she could wager a guess that it had something to do with a comment that Connie had made about Anne and Tony. "Yeah, they've been dating for a few months now and they got engaged a little while ago," Kim confirmed. "They have known each other since forever, but they got really close in officer training. Anne's had quite a few relationships, but this is the first time I've ever seen her this in love."

"They're engaged?" Shego asked. Kim nodded. "Were they engaged when I captured Tony?" she further asked. Kim nodded again. Shego sat up so she could face Kim. "That's why you did it, didn't you?" she asked. "That's why you blew up my place: because I had Anne's fiancé."

Kim nodded a third time. "I didn't want Anne to lose Tony the way I had lost you," she admitted readily. "So we went in there with everything we had." Shego didn't speak, and Kim decided she'd done enough talking. "So that's pretty much the basics when it comes to Anne," she concluded. "Your turn. Where in the hell have you been for the past twenty years?"

Shego grimaced. She knew Kim had a right to know, but she had been trying to forget those years for so long that she was loath to recall them. "I don't remember some of it," she warned as an attempt to stall. "So what I know is mostly secondhand information I got from the doctors."

"I'll take any information you can give me," Kim assured her.

Shego sighed. Damn, she thought, but began anyway. "Well, from what the doctors told me, I apparently didn't die in the Arctic," she said. "My powers were duking it out with Hyperkinetic's powers and my body just shut down. It wasn't until we got back to headquarters that his powers won and I actually died."

"Then how are you here?" Kim interrupted impatiently.

"That part was a little hazy for the doctors," Shego admitted. "They took me off life support, called the time and called the morgue. But, while they were waiting for the morgue, I started to glow. My best guess is that this is the point that Hyperkinetic's powers finally dissipated and my powers started to make a comeback. Anyway, they figured the glow meant I was not as dead as they thought, so they hooked me back up to the monitors. Sure enough, my heart had started beating again. They called in Dr. Director, she had me moved to a more secluded room and for three months I continued to glow. Then, I woke up."

Kim frowned. "Dr. Director knew you were alive?" she asked sharply.

"Yeah, she did," Shego confirmed. "But we'll get to that. Regardless, three months later, I woke up, but my body was still toast, literally. It took another nine months of my powers doing whatever in the hell it is they do and doing it in the most excruciating way possible before I was well enough to leave the hospital wing."

"Those nine months must have been torture," Kim said sympathetically, reaching out to touch her cheek.

"What made me most nuts was not being able to be in contact with you," Shego confessed. "I asked why you weren't coming to visit, and Dr. Director admitted she hadn't told you I wasn't actually dead. That pissed me off to no end, and had I been able, I was pissed off enough to kill her. She had some bullshit explanation about how she was trying to protect you in case something went wrong and I died again. I bought it at the time, but when I got out, I realized she hadn't told you because you were pregnant and she didn't want me to find out that you were pregnant."

"She didn't know whose Anne was either," Kim replied. "She probably thought she was protecting me from your wrath and protecting you from the anguish of finding out I'd betrayed you."

"Yeah, that's what I figured, too, and she confirmed it when I tracked her down later," Shego confirmed. "But that information wasn't all that comforting after I finally got out of the hospital and all I saw was you with Ron and a kid."

"Where did you see us? Why didn't you just come up?" Kim asked, her voice strained.

"The park and I was too stunned to do anything but stare for a while," Shego recalled. "Then when I came to, I hid behind a tree until you left, not really knowing what to do. After that, I left to track down Dr. Director; she told me what she could, but it wasn't what I wanted to hear, so I told her that I was through with GJ and I left. I spent the next few hours wandering around trying to figure out what to do and quite a few ideas popped up. More than anything, I wanted to kill Ron, but I was still in love with you and I knew you would hate me if I did that. I thought about killing you and then killing myself, but after what I had gone through to stay alive, that wasn't all that attractive either. The idea that came up most often was to just find you and talk to you, but I was so upset and pissed off that I was afraid of what I would do and I had already ruled out killing you. So, ultimately, I ended up doing jack-shit but leaving town."

Kim sighed. What Shego was telling her was breaking her heart in several different ways. She was sorry for Shego's pain, sorry for her own pain, sorry that their lives had turned out like this and mostly sorry that a few ill-advised decisions and misunderstandings had caused so much anguish. "I'm sorry that you had to go through all that, Shego," she said softly. "I shouldn't have taken Dr. Director at her word; I should have kept looking for you."

"And why would you have done that, Princess?" Shego asked, reaching out for Kim and drawing her close. "You thought I was dead. How in the world are you supposed to find a dead person?"

Kim let out a breath as she snuggled closer to Shego's warm body. "I guess," she said noncommittally. "It just seems like there could have been more I could do." She leaned back to get a better look at Shego's face. "So I get all that," she said. "But how did you become the Boss?"

"Ah, yes. I figured that was the next question," Shego said wryly. "Well, I wandered around the country for a while trying to decide what to do. I had already decided that I didn't want to kill any of you guys but I wanted you back. I thought about kidnapping you, but your kid needed you and that seemed wrong, even for my skewed morals. I thought about kidnapping you and the kid, but, and I know this going to sound off, I didn't want to take the kid away from her father. My own dad left right after the Wegos were born, and that experience was not something I would wish on practically anyone. I didn't know your kid, but I didn't want to be responsible for doing that to her. Coming back and just busting up your family would have done the same thing, so that was out, too. Finally I decided that the only way I was going to get you back in a way that would be okay with me meant I would have to get rid of the kid. And the best way to get rid of the kid was to make sure she'd never existed in the first place, so I decided to steal the time machine idea that Drakken had been working on since before he'd hired me."

Kim's eyebrow rose. "That was an ambitious course of action," Kim observed. "That plan was one of the reasons Drakken got hired at GJ and still hasn't produced a prototype."

"You always were a master of diplomacy," Shego said in wry admiration. "It was a completely fucking insane course of action. I had no idea what to do after I stole the plans. My degree is in child development, not physics."

"So what did you do?" Kim asked.

"I started hijacking people," Shego answered. "People who could figure it out and who owed me one. People like DD Reauxwaive."

"He had an engineering degree," Kim remembered.

"Yeah, and he worked for his brother for quite a few years. Granted, he was a mole for GJ, but he picked up on a lot of stuff," Shego explained. "He owed me one for saving his life, and as I later found out, he was in love with me, so he was easy to convince." Ignoring Kim's look, she pressed on. "Anyway, he still had a lot of contacts from the Syndicate days and together we got the Syndicate going again with him as the public face. We used it as a cover and money generator for funding the time machine development. It took a lot of time and a lot of abductions, but after a while we had refined Drew's plans to the point where we could start building it. Five years later we had it, and it was a pretty little machine too. DD designed it to be used with my plasma and it was capable of taking me anywhere in time I wanted to go."

"But you said at the compound that it didn't work," Kim reminded her.

"Well, it would have worked if it hadn't been irreparably sabotaged," Shego clarified. "And that was probably what pushed me over the edge from obsession into insanity."

Hyperkinetic Syndicate Arctic Headquarters – 6 years ago

Shego ran her hand over the smooth steel outer shell of her baby. It was finally finished; fourteen years' worth of planning and construction had finally come to an end. As the years had gone by, she had found herself getting lost in the details: a part to be stolen here, a scientist to abduct there, but now, with just a few more procedures to run, she remembered why she had done it all, and she reveled in the thought of her Kimmie. Her Kimmie would never cheat on her; it had to have been the grief, so she just had to prevent herself from being temporarily killed; then Kimmie wouldn't go insane with grief and sleep with the buffoon and there would be no kid. No kid and they could be truly happy. "Are we ready, DD?" she asked.

"Almost there, Boss," he called back, pushing a few buttons on his control panel. The machine suddenly lit up and the door slid open allowing Shego access. "I just gave primary control to the interior controls, Boss," he explained. "You just need to charge up the batteries and we should be already to go."

Shego climbed in, more than ready to get underway. She put her fist in the energy collection chamber and lit up, stopping when the panel lights indicated the cells were full and ready to go. "I'm shutting the door and charging up the black box, DD," she said.

"Good luck, Boss," DD said with a nod. He stepped back as the door slid shut and the outside panel indicated it was sealed. He went back to the control panel, watching it intently for the green light that indicated that the time-travel mechanism, aka "black box" had turned on. It came on, and DD held his breath as the machine started to glow. He hadn't believed it possible, but the Boss was really about to do it.

All of a sudden, the indicators on his board started to flash red and the craft powered down. "Shit," he cursed. "Boss!" he said into the COM, "it looks like the black box is not getting enough power to sustain its operation; it looks like you might have an energy leak somewhere."

"I know; I see it too," Shego radioed back. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Lemme check," DD replied. He came out from behind his console and popped the hatch on the outside that led to the black box. He called up the schematic on his handheld and studied it together with the equipment. He frowned; everything seemed to be within spec. He closed the hatch and went around to the door to find Shego coming out of it. "The black box looks fine, Boss," he shrugged. "It should be working. Let me take a look in here." Shego nodded. He came in and opened the hatch underneath the energy collection chamber. Again, everything seemed to be in place. "I dunno, Boss," he said finally. "Let's try it again and I'll see if I can get a reading to tell me what is up."

"All right," Shego agreed. She was becoming slightly worried. They had powered up the black box before and it had never had this kind of power drain. Their stable of scientists had assured them that power would not be a problem, and Shego trusted them, or at least trusted their desire to live. So, the fact they were having power problems was disconcerting. She put her hand back into the energy collection chamber and powered up the batteries once again. She shut the door and turned the black box on again, waiting for it to come up to full power. It did briefly, but yet again, it lasted mere seconds before the craft powered down again. "What did you catch, DD?" she demanded.

"The power amplifier isn't working," he answered, puzzled. It was working yesterday. "The black box isn't getting enough sustained energy to run."

Shego sighed, opening the door and coming out again. "How long will it take to fix?" she asked, annoyed.

"Depends on the damage," DD replied, accessing yet another panel to take a look. "Shit!" he cursed.

"What?" Shego demanded, alarmed at his tone.

"The amplifier is completely burned out," he said. "No wonder we have no power continuity."

"How could something like this happen?" Shego asked.

"It wasn't spontaneous; someone had to do it on purpose," DD acknowledged.

Shego kept down her rage long enough to ask a question. "How long will it take to fix? Can we just get a new one?" she inquired tightly.

DD grimaced. "It can't be fixed, and we can't get another one," he admitted. "The one we had on this thing is the only one of its kind in existence in the world."

"So we're screwed," Shego said, her rage intensifying.

"Not necessarily," DD said hastily. "We can have you power the black box directly; that should give it enough power to work."

"The black box is on the outside, DD," Shego pointed out. "And I have to be inside to survive the time jump. Besides, how am I supposed to control the fucking thing if I am on the outside? And we tried having me power it directly, and it drained my power so fast that it nearly killed me. That's why we have an amplifier."

DD hung his head; she was right. Without that amplifier, fourteen years of work could go down the drain. "We could try to manufacture another one," he offered.

"And how long would that take?" Shego asked.

"A few years?" DD said hesitantly. "The amplifier was one of the hardest things to build and it took forever to get it right."

Shego's heart sank. They had already wasted fourteen years on this. She had waited fourteen fucking years to get her princess back and now it wasn't going to happen for an indeterminate length of time, if at all. She could feel the despair and rage coming over her and she had to get out of there. "I need some air, DD," she stated and marched out of the room.

Kim's Bedroom – Present Day

"I was gone for a year," Shego admitted as she looked at Kim. "And somehow over that year, it became all your fault. I decided that I was going to rebuild the amplifier, but that this time the amplifier would be the machine and that with it I would get revenge on those that had hurt me. I wasn't crazy enough to want to wait another fourteen years for it, though, so I decided to take over Hench-co to get their resources. But even with all of their technological know-how, it still took me another five years to get the amplifier built."

"And why did you decide to use it?" Kim asked.

"Two reasons, really," Shego answered. "One, it was finished, and two, you had just wiped out my plant and I thought it was time to teach you a lesson. I knew kidnapping your boys would get you to come to me, but I never figured you would bring a surprise package with you."

"And here we are," Kim concluded.

"Yeah, here we are," Shego agreed. "So what do we do now, Princess?"

Kim sighed and got up from the bed. She went to the window that Shego had come through and looked through it to see the sky lightening to the east. After that story, she really couldn't blame Shego, but she couldn't totally absolve her either. She turned around. "I don't know what to do now, Shego," she confessed. "I obviously still love you and you being here is the fulfillment of one of my greatest wishes. But I thought you were dead and you were gone for twenty years, and I've spent most of my adult life trying to forget you so that I could move on. And on top of this, I've found out that you've spent the last twenty years being and doing what I've sworn to protect the world against. So even if I didn't have to deal with our past, I still have to deal with a credible threat to the world and my family that as of yesterday was criminally insane. I mean at the very least, I should be hauling you off to jail right now. I guess all of that to say: I love you, but in spite of what happened tonight, it's going to take me a while to get all of this shit mentally straightened out enough for me to let you back in my life."

"Well at least there is a chance I can be let back in," Shego said, pragmatically grateful. "I came here figuring you would arrest me or kill me without even talking to me." She got up off the bed and crossed over to Kim, reaching out and gathering her up. "Besides, you're right; I've been batshit crazy for at least the last five years, and I seriously doubt that two hits to the jaw and back of the head have cured me completely, skillfully administered though they were." Kim smiled and Shego kissed her. She then let go and started gathering and putting on her clothes, slipping into her jumpsuit last and zipping it up. She picked up Anne's frame from the table where Kim had placed it. "Can I have this?" she asked, hoping she wasn't pressing her luck.

"Of course," Kim replied, with a sad smile. Shego smiled in return and gathered Kim up for one last kiss before disappearing out the window. Kim watched her go then headed for the shower. She had someone to talk to.

Shego moved the brush off her plane and climbed in, taking off and heading for the Arctic. She thought the whole way up there about a lot of different things and by the time she landed she had a few ideas about the new directions Hench-co and the Syndicate were going to take. The first thing she did was track DD down to discuss a flash of inspiration she'd had.

"How'd it go?" he asked as he walked into her office after her page.

"Eh, it could have been worse," she said cheerfully. "But I still have work to do. Do you think we could use the plasma amplifier or at least some of its parts to get the time machine working?"

DD did a double-take. This question either had triumph or disaster written all over it. "Maybe?" he said apprehensively.

"Good. See if you can get it to work," Shego ordered.

DD knew he could be bringing the wrath of the Boss down on his head, but he had to ask. "Why?" he questioned pensively.

"I have twenty years to catch up on, DD," Shego answered, placing the picture frame Kim had given her on her desk.

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Vivian yawned as she made her way towards the front door. She had no idea who would be coming by at this time of the morning, but they weren't going away, so she figured she should answer it. She peered through the spy-hole and was shocked into full alertness. "Madame Director," she said crisply when she hurriedly opened the door. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything is fine, Vivian," Kim assured her. "I just really need to talk to Betty."

"Of course," Vivian said, knowing everything was not fine if Kim wanted to talk now. "I'll go get her. Please have a seat."

Kim sat down on the couch and moments later, Dr. Director and Vivian both came down the stairs. Kim took a breath to calm herself and then got right to the point. "Why didn't you tell me that Shego was alive?" she asked, putting an angry emphasis on every single word as Dr. Director and Vivian sat down on the couch opposite her.

Vivian, who knew most of the story but didn't know that, looked at Betty in shock. Dr. Director sighed and tried to explain. "I know it was wrong and stupid of me, but at the time I thought it was best for everyone," she said.

"How in the hell was it best for me, Betty?" Kim asked her voice starting to rise. "I was pregnant with her child for god's sake!"

"And how was I supposed to know that, Kim?" Dr. Director asked, her own voice rising. "How was I supposed to know that you were carrying another woman's baby?"

"What was I supposed to do, announce to the world that my precious baby girl had no biological father so they could label her a freak of nature and take her away from me?" Kim challenged.

"Of course not," Dr. Director snapped. "But it wasn't a wild assumption that she was a grief-stricken mistake with Ron. I was just trying to protect you both from a woman known to be excessively violent."

"Bullshit," Kim said succinctly. "You knew I could handle Shego; I always had. There has to be more to it."

Betty pursed her lips and Vivian frowned, knowing there was something else she was hiding. Dr. Director saw the frown. "All right," she acquiesced. "Maybe your unexpected pregnancy wasn't the only reason I didn't tell you. I'll admit it; back then, I thought you couldn't have any emotional ties to be a good agent and I had already picked you out to be my successor. When she died, it was obvious that you loved Shego far more than you loved GJ, and that wasn't acceptable. So when she came back, I decided that GJ needed you more than she did."

"What kind of hypocritical bullshit is that, Betty?" Kim demanded. "You met Vivian right after Anne was born and you married her before I married Ron. If good agents are supposed to be some sort of twisted fucking 'lone wolves', why in the fuck did you get to have a family? And who in the fuck gave you the fucking right to decide I should sacrifice mine for fucking GJ?!"

"No one," Dr. Director said regretfully. "But by the time I realized my mistake, Shego had formed the Syndicate and you had already married Ron. I figured it was best to leave it for everyone's sake."

"No, you figured it was best for your sake," Kim countered. "You had to know that if I'd found out, I would either kill you or at the very least leave GJ and you couldn't have that." Kim got up from the couch and started to pace, thinking. "So, you knew Shego was the Boss, didn't you?" she asked rhetorically. "You knew and you covered it up so that I would never find out that you kept the truth from me. But then she turned violent and it all came crashing down, didn't it?"

"Yes," Dr. Director stated, and her iron façade started to crack. "I covered her tracks and let the Syndicate get away with far too much. It wasn't until she went after Hench-co that I realized how much damage I had caused by lying to you and by trying to cover up that lie. With that much guilt on my head, I had no choice but to retire." She sighed, glanced at her wife and then looked back at Kim. "I am truly sorry for everything I have done to your family. I made a terrible mistake and I compounded it by not wanting to admit my mistake. There is absolutely nothing I can do to make it up to you and all I can do is ask your forgiveness."

Kim looked at her. "There is no way I will ever get over what you have put me and my family through," she said honestly. "But, as much as it saddens me because it shows me how like you I have become, at least I understand it." She got up off the couch and walked toward the door. "I don't know if I can forgive you, Betty, but at least now I feel like I have the whole story," Kim said, opening the door. She gave Vivian a nod and walked out the door.

Vivian stared at Betty in shock and anger. "Please don't tell me that you hate me too," Betty pleaded. "I don't think I could bear it."

"But maybe then you would feel some of what Kim and Shego have had to feel for twenty years," Vivian retorted. "How could you be so arrogant, Betty?" Betty got up from the couch and started to head up the stairs. "Where are you going?" Vivian asked.

"To pack my stuff," Betty replied.

"Don't be stupid," Vivian said irritably. "Get back over here." Betty sat back down on the couch and Vivian opened her arms. "You're my wife; I love you and I will always forgive you," Vivian said and Betty gratefully accepted the hug.


	9. Mamma Mia

Chapter 9 – Mamma Mia

Once she was outside of the door, Kim took a deep breath to calm herself but it did little good. She was so filled with rage that the only thing she wanted to do was turn around, march back into the living room and rip Betty apart from limb to limb. It would be only fitting for all of the death and destruction she had caused, and Kim knew she could do it. She had broken the neck of the last person who had tried to take Shego from her and Hyperkinetic had far less guilt on his head than Betty Director. The fact that Betty was a supposed "good" guy would not cause a second's pause.

She turned and grabbed a hold of the doorknob, but before she could turn it, an unwanted yet completely pertinent thought occurred to her. If she went back inside and killed Betty, she would be taking her away from Vivian and Liz. If she did that, she would be ruining the lives of two of her officers, and in doing so, she would be no better than Betty herself. Of course she could make the argument that she was justified when Betty was not, but Betty in her own twisted way could justify her actions too.

Kim's hand fell reluctantly off the doorknob and she turned back around. Moral superiority was not going to feel nearly as good as killing Betty would have felt, but at least it wasn't a decision she would come to regret. She took one last deep breath and went to her car so she could get out of there and get to work before she could change her mind.

Once she got to work, she focused on little things until the time came around for the staff meeting she had arranged for the previous night. She gathered up her stuff and went into the conference room, unsurprised to find her section heads, including a gaze-avoiding Vivian, already seated and ready to go. "Thank you all for being so prompt," she said formally, sitting down. "First off, I would like to apologize to all of you," she said, looking at them all. "It was stupid of me to go alone, and I appreciate and commend you for not following my orders." Her section heads said nothing, but most of them cracked slightly smug grins. "And second, based on what I found out up there, the situation at Hench-co is far more complicated than any of us ever could have imagined."

"So we gathered from what little you told us last night," Justine answered. "They have a second doomsday device?"

Kim nodded. "They do," she confirmed. "But it's not really the second machine itself that complicates things. It is who the machine was built for that really screws things up."

"It wasn't built for Hyperkinetic?" Wade asked.

"No," Kim replied. "It was built for the Boss." She looked around to see a table full of justly confused faces and she started to explain. "In spite of what we have thought since the reformation of the Syndicate, Hyperkinetic is not the Boss. He is merely the face of the organization and someone else is actually running the show. In addition, it is the identity of this person that makes this whole situation even more volatile than it would be than if it were merely two separate people."

"Why? Who is it?" Drakken asked.

"A former GJ agent that everyone assumed had been killed over twenty years ago," Kim said, and looks passed between everyone around the table. "No one ever knew her real name, but for the entire time of her public history, she went by Shego, her nickname from her superhero days."

All movement around the table stilled as the shock of that statement sank in. Wade and Drakken, two of the only three people around the table that knew of Madame Director's history with her looked especially distraught. After a few minutes of shocked silence, Felix spoke looking for some clarification. "The Shego?" he asked.

"Yes," Kim responded. "The Shego. The same one we thought the first Hyperkinetic had killed. She managed to survive, and she tried to come back, but there were unfortunate circumstances that prevented it. She went back to evil and reformed the Syndicate, but the failure of her first big project pushed her off the deep end. She went insane and started blaming me for the way her life turned out.

She needed technology to carry out her plan of revenge on me, which why she and the Syndicate took over Hench-co."

"Why did she blame you?" Dr. Lurkin asked. "From all that we've heard, you did everything in your power to save her."

"She didn't blame me because she died," Kim corrected. She looked down at the table and then back up. She hadn't planned on telling everyone about her and Shego's past, but since Shego was a viable threat to the world's security and what had happened was an important part of why she was a threat, her section heads had a right to know. "Not many people know this, but before she 'died', she and I were lovers. The reason Shego became evil again and ultimately went insane is because she thought I had betrayed her and abandoned our love to be with Ron." Eyes around the table widened as most of them tried to reconcile that information with what they knew of Madame Director. "She had asked me to marry her the night before we went on the Hyperkinetic mission and I asked her to wait, thinking we had plenty of time. Instead she got shot and she took a year to recover. When she came back, she saw me out with Anne and Ron and assumed I'd betrayed her."

"But hadn't you?" Justine asked, not wishing to offend, but seeing Shego's point.

"No," Kim replied. "And that is the other complication in this that you should all know about. Not only was I involved with Shego, but Anne is also her daughter."

The only two not staring dumbly back at her were Wade and Vivian. With what he had seen of Anne's powers, Drakken had figured she had to be Shego's, but figuring on the impossible and finding out it had happened were two completely different things. The other three, who had absolutely no inkling about any of this, were just stunned. Kim waited to let them absorb the information before attempting to move on, and she was surprised when Felix spoke only a few seconds later.

"Well, that does explain the powers better," he admitted as a wry smile came over his face. Justine and Dr. Lurkin nodded in agreement with small grins of their own.

Kim was shocked by their response. "You aren't upset or outraged?" she said incredulously.

"It probably would have been nice to know about Anne a little sooner, Madame Director," Justine acknowledged. "But we have all known you far too long and seen far too much for anything to truly shock us. So the fact that your daughter was, um, fathered by someone other than Ron probably surprises us more than the fact that the someone else was a woman. You are about the last person any of us would have ever suspected as having an illicit affair." Kim colored slightly, but Justine politely ignored it as she pressed on. "So now I guess there are two things that have become imperative that we discuss, Madame Director," she continued. "One, it must have been quite a shock to you to learn Shego was alive, so as a formality I feel I have to ask you if you are doing okay and if you feel fit to lead." Kim nodded. "Good," Justine said. "And number two, what do you think we can expect from Shego now?"

Kim looked one by one at each of her section heads, and what she saw there made her proud. There was nothing but quiet support and gentle amusement in their gazes. They weren't judging her because of her relationship with Shego or blaming her for what Shego had become; instead they merely accepted her and the facts, and as true professionals, their faces said they were eager to their jobs. Kim nodded. "Well, from what I gathered while I was up there, I don't think Shego is an immediate threat," she decided. "We destroyed a major base of her operation and we took the key to the operational doomsday device. Also, after she found out that she had been in the wrong about her assumptions regarding me and Anne, she seemed less keen on her plan of revenge."

"Did she actually say that, Madame Director?" Drakken asked. "I've known Shego for a long time and she can be quite focused. Even though she now knows the story and knows Anne is her daughter, her plans might only be delayed due to distraction and not thwarted. Do we know for sure that the world or especially that you yourself will not be at peril?"

"She has already tracked me to my house," Kim admitted. "And she wasn't violent. She came in, we talked for most of the night about Anne and she left without incident. I really don't think she means to do me harm anymore."

The section heads sat back, aghast. "That was very dangerous, Madame Director," Vivian chastised, speaking for the first time as her dismay over Kim's actions won out over her mortification over Betty's actions.

"I've always been able to handle Shego," Kim countered.

"Sane Shego," Wade shot back. He pushed a button on the table in front of him and a computer panel popped out. He pushed a few buttons, scowled at what it told him and then pushed another button. Within seconds, Alex's head popped up. "There was a situation at Madame Director's house last night," he said through clenched teeth. "Make sure the security system is activated and make sure that it stays that way 24/7." Alex nodded and Wade cut off the call. "What is the point of you being in that house if you don't use it to protect yourself?" he asked in irritation.

"I was distracted and I didn't set the system," Kim replied evenly. "I forgot. It was fine because I can still kick anyone in the world's ass if I want to as evidenced by the fact that I escaped with only scratches when I fought Shego earlier in the day."

Wade's frown softened a little. "Just be careful," he requested. "We can handle Shego, Hench-co or any of her world destruction plots. We can't handle losing you, especially if it's because you were being stupid."

"Noted," Kim stated. "But now back to Dr. Lipsky's last question. No, I don't think that Shego or Hench-co will be an immediate threat to me or to the world. I think we should keep a careful on them, but based on what I found out and what I sensed from Shego last night, I really don't think she is going to continue with her world domination plans."

"Then we wait and see?" Justine offered.

"I think that is the best route we can take," Kim agreed. All the heads nodded. Sensing the meeting was over, everyone started to rise, but Kim forestalled them. "Anne doesn't know who her real father is," Kim said quietly. "So I would prefer that the information revealed today stay only with the section heads." Everyone nodded emphatically. "Good. Dismissed," Kim concluded. Everyone got up and left, and after making sure she had everything, Kim followed them. As she was leaving the conference room, Vivian stopped her.

"I needed to give you this, Madame Director," she said, handing Kim an envelope.

Kim ripped it open and after reading a few lines realized it was a resignation letter. "Come with me, Vivian," she ordered. "We need to talk." Vivian nodded sadly and followed Kim meekly to her office. Kim waved to Teresa and after the door opened, they both went in and sat down. "I can't accept this, Vivian," she said, handing it back to her.

"Please, Madame Director, I insist," Vivian pleaded. "I can't repay what Betty's interference has done to you and your family or what it has done to countless others. How am I supposed to come in here day after day and try to look you in the eye and be your trusted associate when I know what Betty has done? How am I supposed to look at Anne and not see the other parent that Betty took away from her for all those years? I mean even in my own section I have Tony to remind me."

Kim frowned. "I am not going to accept it, Vivian," she reiterated. "Betty did all of those things, not you. Betty needs to take responsibility for them, not you. You are the best cyberneticist that the world has ever seen and what you contribute to GJ is incalculable. You are also one of my most trusted officers and second-in-command of GJ; there is no way I would let you go so you can assume someone else's guilt."

Vivian looked up and Kim could see the indecision. "She's my wife, Madame Director," Vivian said quietly. "And I still love her and I want to support her. But I feel can't support her and be loyal to you."

"Bullshit," Kim stated. "Do you know what I wanted to do this morning? I wanted and I still want to make Betty die a slow, painful death. But I didn't because of you. I care for and respect you enough that I spared Betty for your sake, meaning I am still loyal to you, in spite of everything she has done. If I can do it, how can you tell me that it can't be done and you are walking away from me, GJ and all of your responsibilities?"

Vivian thought about that. "I can't," she acknowledged. She tore up the letter in her hand and dropped it down the paper chute on Kim's desk. "Thank you, Madame Director," she said as she turned to leave.

"You're welcome," Kim said with a small smile. Vivian inclined her head and left Kim's office. Kim flipped on her computer, opened the Hench-co file and started typing her report about yesterday's mission.

It took a while after all of the excitement for things to settle down, but eventually they did, and after three months, things were running pretty much as they had before the uproar with Hench-co. They continued to monitor Hench-co closely, but nothing extraordinarily evil seemed to be going on; instead it seemed the opposite. They left their ruined factory in ruins and they shifted their entire operation to the Arctic. They also scaled back their operation considerably, or so it seemed when GJ Intel got word that hundreds of henchmen had received their pink slips. Such news encouraged Kim, and those reports, as well as umpteen nights lying awake and thinking about her, made Kim really consider taking Shego back.

Up in the Arctic, Kim was never very far from Shego's mind either. She knew that curtailing Hench-co's evil activities would earn her goodwill points with Kim, and she wanted Kim to know she was trying. Admittedly, the scale-back also served the purpose of keeping GJ at bay so she could finish making the adjustments and repairs necessary to adapt the plasma amplifier to the time machine to get the time machine working. Knowing what she knew now, there were so many regrets, but those were what she was working very hard to fix. She had three eight-hour shifts of people working around the clock and she, via DD, supervised as much as possible. She rarely left, and then usually only to catch a few minutes sleep or grab some food once in a while. The only time she left for any considerable length of time was when the ache for Kim became too much and she left Headquarters to go to Middleton. She always went to Kim's house, never going in and only staying around the periphery. She wanted to get closer, but she didn't want to push it by challenging the suddenly scaled-up security around Kim's place. But just seeing Kim coming home or leaving for work was always enough, and she would return to Headquarters refreshed.

Kim was completely unaware of Shego's visits, and it was probably a good thing if Kim truly wanted to keep Shego at arm's length. She had been tempted more than a few times to go to the Arctic, but she had managed to resist by reminding herself she wanted more time. She also tried to distract herself with her life when the desire to go up north got to be unbearable. Anne and Tony were a great distraction team, and they had, luckily enough, just announced their engagement and set a date, which allowed Kim to busy herself with wedding details from time to time. Her phone buzzed and Kim jumped, snapping out of the doze she had managed to drop into. "Yes, Teresa?" she asked.

"The chief medical officer wants to talk to you," Teresa answered. "Should I put her through?"

Kim frowned. She'd had a physical last week and the doctor had been none too happy with her breast exam. The doctor had ordered a battery of tests and a mammogram and Kim reasoned it was about time to get the results. She hoped it wasn't cancer and she instinctively shielded her breasts protectively, wincing when her tender chest complained. "Sure, put her through," Kim requested.

The Chief Medical Officer's redhead flipped up onto the screen. "Hello, Madame Director," she said crisply. "We got the test results back and I am sorry to report there has been an unexpected result. We would like you to come back in for some follow-up tests and a consult."

"Is it cancer?" Kim asked bluntly.

"I am not going to answer a question like that over the phone, especially when I don't have all the results I need," Dr. Ann Possible retorted. "If you want to know the answer, get your bubble butt over here and take a couple more tests."

Kim sighed and once again questioned the wisdom of making her mother Chief Medical Officer. "All right, Mom," she surrendered. "I'll be over in five minutes." She cut off the call and got up from her desk, pushing her chair in irritably. She went through the door to the outer office and Teresa looked up from her desk. "It looks like I need to go back for a couple more tests," Kim explained. "If Anne drops by for our meeting and I am not back yet, please have her wait; she scheduled this appointment two weeks ago and she'll kill me if I flake." Teresa nodded and Kim left, walking across the compound to the medical ward. As soon as she walked through the door, the nurse ushered her to a room.

"Please roll up your sleeve, Madame Director," she requested politely. Kim did so and she produced a needle and a syringe to draw a few CCs of Kim's blood. After she had bandaged it, she handed Kim a cup. "I also need a urine sample," she said apologetically, and Kim sighed, grabbing the cup from her and heading into the adjacent bathroom. She came back in a couple of minutes later and handed the now half-full cup back to the nurse. "Thank you, Madame Director," the nurse said, bagging up the cup. "Dr. Possible wants to run a couple of tests on these and then she will be right with you. Please have a seat in the waiting area and we will call you when she is ready for you." She left, and Kim followed right after her. She chose a seat and gingerly sat down in it, too nervous to actually sit back and be comfortable. It felt like damn near forever, but it was only about fifteen minutes, before the nurse got a page and told her to go back to her mother's office.

Kim sprung up out of her seat and marched down the hallway, taking a deep breath before she knocked. The door slid open and she walked in, quickly choosing one of her mother's chairs and sitting down in it. She looked at her mother, and the concerned expression on her face made Kim assume the worst. "It's cancer, isn't it?" she asked shortly.

"No," her mother replied succinctly, and Kim let out a breath.

"Then what is it?" Kim asked. "What did you need the retest for?"

"Well, none of the tests came back positive for cancer markers, but there was an unexpected result to one of the tests that we performed," her mother explained. "I wanted to do a retest to be positive of the results before I gave them to you."

"Well, if I don't have cancer, Mom, what in the hell do I have?" Kim asked uneasily.

"You don't 'have' anything, Kim," her mother replied. "The test that came back positive was the mandatory pregnancy test. You're not sick; you're pregnant."

Kim's expression did not change as she replayed what her mother had said over and over in her mind. When she finally decided she had heard what she thought she had, her face twisted up into something halfway between a scowl and a grimace. "You've got to be fucking kidding me," she said flatly.

"Well, that answers the question as to whether this baby was expected or not," Ann noted crisply.

"I've had sex once in the past year, Mom," Kim retorted crossly. "So yeah, it is kind of unexpected."

"It only takes once," Ann rejoined. "And you've been off birth control since the divorce."

"Thanks for the biology lesson, Mom," Kim shot back. "But you would have more of a point if I had actually had sex that was supposed to be procreative."

Ann looked at her and an eyebrow rose. That statement could mean a lot of different things, but she took the easiest route. "You mean Ron isn't the father of this baby?" she asked, her twin grandsons proof that Ron could father children.

"No," Kim admitted.

"But you know who the father is," Ann said hopefully.

"Give me some credit, Mom," Kim snapped. "I've only ever slept with two people in my entire life; yes, I know who the damn father is."

Ann's brow contracted. If this baby wasn't Ron's, by her count that should be three people Kim had slept with. "Who is the father, Kim?" she asked, now suspicious that there was something very important that Kim wasn't telling her.

Kim sighed. "There isn't one," she replied honestly. Ann didn't say anything but waited for the explanation. "Um, remember when the boys got kidnapped by Hench-co about three months ago?" Kim asked. Ann nodded. "Well, I found out that Shego was behind it and she's been alive all of this time," Kim explained. Ann's eyes widened; she could see where this was headed. "I found out she was the Boss when I went to get the boys back. While I was there, Anne used her powers and Shego found out about her," Kim continued. "I knocked Shego out and we all got out of there, but later that night Shego tracked me down because she wanted to talk about Anne. And, well, she didn't leave until the morning."

Ann frowned. She had heard about the Boss and what she had heard wasn't pretty, so it concerned her that Kim was carrying her child and that Shego now knew Anne was hers. But she couldn't blame Kim; she knew how deeply Kim cared for Shego and she couldn't even imagine the pain Kim had gone through when she lost her. Ann wasn't going to blame her for a temporary lapse in judgment, even if it had produced a child. "Are you going to keep it?" she asked gently.

"She has to be a 'she', just like Anne did, Mom," Kim corrected, distracted. From the moment she had heard the word 'pregnant', she knew this was going to come up, but she didn't really want to think about it. There had been no choice with Anne; she was all Kim had left of Shego and there was no way she would give her up. Now was different, though, very different, and Kim needed some time to think about it. "I don't know," she said quietly.

Ann sighed and came around her desk. She pulled Kim out of the visitor's chair and over to her couch, sitting down and gently tugging Kim down with her. She wrapped her arms around her daughter, and smiled when Kim returned the embrace. Kim may have been the stalwart Madame Director to most of the people in the building, but to Ann she was still her baby and it was clear that after all Kim had been through and stubbornly faced alone this past year, she just needed a shoulder and some motherly advice. Ann began to stroke Kim's hair and Kim let out an extended sigh. "I know everything is completely different now, and I'll love you and respect your choice no matter what, but I can't help but think that this baby is no less of a miracle than Anne was," Ann said softly.

"I know, Mom," Kim sighed. "That's the conclusion that I keep coming up with too. I still think I need more time, though."

"As would anyone," Ann replied. She didn't say anything else but just continued to hold Kim. Kim let her for a while, but then her sense of responsibility and a general dislike of feeling helpless kicked in and Kim eased herself off the couch.

"I have a meeting with Anne," she explained when her mother looked at her questioningly.

"I'll be here if you need to talk," Ann answered. Kim nodded and left, headed to her own office.

Anne, unsurprisingly, had already gotten there and was sitting patiently in her outer office. Kim looked at her briefly, a million different things going through her mind. "Sorry, I'm late, Officer Possible," she apologized. "The Chief Medical Officer had a matter she needed to discuss with me."

Anne was instantly concerned. It was obvious that Ma was out of sorts and Anne knew she had a physical recently. The fact that Grandma had wanted to speak directly to Ma might mean that something had been amiss with her test results. "It's okay, Madame Director," she said quickly. "I haven't been waiting long." Her mother arched an eyebrow at the obvious lie, but said nothing, instead turning toward her office. "We can do this some other day," Anne offered, thinking her mother might not be in the mood for a meeting.

"No, right now is fine, Officer Possible," Kim replied, opening her door. "There is probably something I should discuss with you, too."

Anne followed her mother into the office and sat down, waiting until the door was shut and her mom had sat down before she got right to the point. "What's wrong with you, Ma?" she asked, worried. "Why did Grandma want to see you in person?"

"I thought I was going to offer my advice on wedding invitations," Kim said, changing the subject. "Wasn't that what this meeting's about?"

"It was, until you came back upset from a consult with Grandma," Anne replied firmly. "I've got an hour of your time and now we are going to use it to talk about you. What's wrong, Ma?" she repeated. "Is it cancer, diabetes, HIV, early-onset Alzheimer's, what?"

Kim sighed. "I am in perfect health," she declared. "Your grandma just wanted to see me because there was an unexpected, not bad, test result."

"Which was?" Anne prompted.

"I'm pregnant," Kim replied simply, not even bothering to try to talk her away around it.

That was about the last thing Anne expected to hear. "But you aren't seeing anyone," she said, puzzled. She thought a little more and came up with something else. "Is it Daddy's?" she asked. "Are you trying to get back together? Was this a last-ditch effort to get back together?"

"No," Kim answered, wanting to dispel that line of thought quickly. She didn't want to get Anne's hopes up for reconciliation.

"Then whose it is, Ma?" Anne asked, a little disappointed. "Is it anyone I know?"

Kim smiled sadly. "No," she said. "It's not a person I am not sure I know anymore." Anne crossed her arms and leaned back into her chair, not saying a word but waiting for her mother to start telling the back-story that obviously existed. Kim debated telling her, but Anne was an adult, and with Shego alive, it was probably better if she knew. "Do you remember a few months back when your dad and I were getting a divorce and you asked why your dad would be so unhappy?" she asked as a way of introduction.

"Of course," Anne replied. "You would only tell me that there was a lot of crap between you, and Daddy was just about as helpful."

"Well, the father of this baby is the crap," Kim admitted, noting that Anne didn't look a bit surprised. She really was too smart for her own damn good sometimes. "It is a very long story, but basically, I've been in love with this someone else since before I married your dad. I was sixteen when we met, and when we met, we were on opposite sides of the law. We fought and kind of flirted for over a year and we had a one-night stand when I was seventeen and dating your father. It only lasted that one night, though and I thought it was over and done with. But then after I graduated high school, things got flipped and my erstwhile enemy decided to turn good and start working here. We spent four years simultaneously becoming best friends and avoiding one another, but there came a point where we couldn't fool ourselves any longer. We became lovers and I broke up with your dad. We were planning to get married, but my lover was killed on a mission. Or so I thought until we went after your brothers and it turned out my long-ago lover had turned into the Boss."

"So the Boss is my father," Anne concluded.

"Yes," Kim answered before she realized what she had just admitted to. "Wait a second. What? I thought we were talking about the new baby," she backpedaled.

Anne shook her head. "You know, the head of an international intelligence agency should really be better at bluffing," she mentioned. "It's okay, Ma; I've known that Daddy wasn't my biological father for a while now."

"But how?" Kim asked, her mind trying to wrap itself around this new development. It seemed today was just a day full of surprises and none of them had really been all that good.

"Well, for starters, my last name isn't Stoppable, even though you two were married for years," Anne pointed out. "I was born over a year before you two married, and when I got the copy of my birth certificate from the county, there was no father listed. The county also has an official adoption record stating Daddy adopted me when I was two, and generally you don't have to do that with your biological children. But probably most importantly, you don't have any kind of superpowers and Daddy's powers look nothing like these," she stated, activating her plasma. "His are blue and given to a chosen one; mine are green. So I started thinking that maybe Daddy wasn't my dad. That got me curious and with some help I got into GJ's computers and I got into your file, thinking it might tell me something. I couldn't find anything substantial, but I did note that there appeared to be a lot of information missing from about the time I came along. I did a little more research, and from what I found out, all agents in GJ had a partner at that time, but yours was mysteriously anonymous. Thinking that maybe your partner could have been my dad, I tried looking for more information on him, but I couldn't find anything; it was like he never existed. That made me really suspicious that he was the one and that someone was trying to cover it up."

Kim sighed. She had destroyed every damn GJ and government record of Shego she could get her hands on so that no one would ever accidentally find out Ron was not Anne's father, and Anne had circumvented all that by merely going to the county and getting the most basic of forms about herself and using a lack of information to figure out that what Kim had been trying to prevent. It figured Anne would do something so maddeningly brilliant. "So why did you go looking for your records?" Kim asked in begrudging admiration.

Anne shrugged. "I just wanted to know why I was like I was," she answered, turning her powers off. "Don't get me wrong; I love my powers now, but for a while I was kind of pissed off that I had them. I wanted to know who or what had given them to me, so I started doing a little digging. It took some doing, but at the time Alex was my boyfriend and he got me into most of the places I needed to go. It was just before I went to college that I finally had most of the pieces and my theory came together.

Kim noted the timing. "Were you only dating Alex for his hacking skills?" she asked, curious.

Anne blushed. "Maybe," she admitted sheepishly. Kim frowned. She hadn't realized Shego had given Anne some of her bad habits along with her powers. "So, if Hyperkinetic is my father, Ma, who is he? What are his powers? Why did he stay away so long? Why did he turn evil?" She looked at her mother's midsection. "And, if he is still evil, why do I have a little sibling on the way?"

With all of those questions, Kim really didn't know where to begin. She thought briefly and then decided that full disclosure would be the best way to go. She got up from her desk and walked to her south wall, using her thumbprint to activate a secret panel that slid open. She disappeared into the small space, and the door slid shut. A few minutes later, the door slid back open, and Kim emerged holding a small strip of paper. She gave the paper to Anne, and Anne was surprised to note they were photographs of her then much younger mother and another young woman. "The Boss isn't Hyperkinetic," Kim said. "And she isn't a 'he'."

Anne looked closely at the pictures, noticing more than a few striking similarities between her and both of the women in the photographs. It was impossible, but bizarrely enough, she found herself believing. She looked at her mother, back down at the pictures and then back up at her mom deciding to ask the one question she had waited years to hear the answer to. "Did you love her, Ma?" she asked.

Kim smiled wistfully. "More than anything in the world," Kim answered. "That's why it hurt so badly when she was killed."

"But if she was killed, how did she become the Boss?" Anne questioned.

"There was a misunderstanding and she thought you were your dad's," Kim replied tightly, her anger at Betty still raw. "She had waited so long to come back to me that finding me with someone else drove her away. Over time, some other things happened and in her quest to get revenge on me, she went crazy and became the Boss. She kept planning her revenge, and when I went after her when she took your brothers, she was going to kill me. But then she saw you and that changed everything."

"I can imagine," Anne murmured. She sighed. "This is some weird shit, Ma," she concluded for lack of anything more profound. Kim nodded in complete agreement. "And it looks like at least some of it happened again," Anne noted. "I take it you saw her again after we got the Twidiots out?"

"Yes, she wanted to know about you, so she tracked me down the night after we had been up at her headquarters," Kim admitted. "We talked about you…"

"And did some other stuff apparently," Anne interjected wryly.

Kim blushed, unable to help it. "Well, tell me what you would do if you lost Tony for twenty years and suddenly she came back to you," she challenged irritably, embarrassed at the gentle teasing but hopeful of the acceptance it might represent.

"Probably the same thing," Anne acknowledged good-naturedly. "But I doubt we would have anything to show for it."

Kim looked at her offspring speculatively as the Anne's tone stayed light. "You are taking all of this extraordinarily well," she observed.

Anne smiled. "Well, except for my father being a girl, it all fits my theory of how I came to be," she said cheerfully. "And, because she has superpowers I can still make it fit, so I am okay, at least for right now." She looked at her mom and her face turned serious. "Are you going to tell her other parent, Ma?" she asked soberly.

"At this point, I don't know if I am keeping the baby, so there might not be anything to tell," Kim said quietly.

"Why in the world would you terminate the pregnancy?" Anne asked, slightly outraged.

"Because I don't know if I want to have Shego's baby," Kim replied.

"Why? Because she was evil for a lot of years and she is still probably crazy? So what?" Anne said dismissively. "That doesn't mean the kid is going to be. I'm not."

"I never said you are or she would be," Kim said in exasperation. "But she just adds another layer of complexity to an already completely fucked-up situation."

It must be the hormones, Anne decided; that was why Ma was saying this kind of cowardly crap. Anne let out a short breath, got her outrage under control and started to point out some facts. "You still love Shego, Ma," she said matter-of-factly. "From the conversation we've had here and all that's gone on over the past year, that is really, really obvious. You also are already referring to the baby as 'she', which seeing as her biological parents are both women, is the only option, but assigning the kid a gender already isn't indicative of someone who wants to get rid of her. And finally, you are Kim Fucking Possible. Since when do you back down from a challenge?"

Kim glared at her, but damn it if Anne wasn't right. "I sometimes wish you weren't so fucking smart," she grumbled. "And now it looks like I am going to have another one of you."

Anne smiled smugly before getting up. "You're mostly to blame, you know," she pointed out. She leaned down and gave her mother a hug. "But, seriously, Ma, I am here for you," she said.

"I know and I appreciate it," Kim said, hugging her back.

Kim's computer suddenly peeped and Anne knew that meant her time was up. She gave her mom one last squeeze and let her go, turning and heading towards the door. "I'll bring the invites by next week," she said as the door opened. "And you should tell Shego," she added before she disappeared. Kim sighed. She hoped that wasn't going to be Anne's mantra for the next six months.

Hench-co's Arctic Headquarters – Same day

Shego fiddled with a random wire that was coming out of the newly-modified plasma amplification unit. She was stoked that they had managed to get an amplifier out of the doomsday device in only a relatively short three-month period, and it made her hopeful that this process wasn't going to take another five to fourteen years. She was clinging to that hope, so she was ignoring DD, who kept reminding her that getting the unit was only a part of the process and that the installation of the new unit into the time machine was going to be the time-consumingpart.

"Hey Boss!" DD called and Shego dropped the wire she had been playing with. She went over to his work bench and found him examining the old, burnt-out plasma amplifier. The sight of it still made her homicidally angry, but she calmed herself down by reminding herself if didn't matter. When the time machine was fixed, that day would never even come to be.

"What do have, DD?" she asked.

"Take a look at the outer casing," he said, handing Shego the one foot by one foot by one foot cube.

She took it from him, resisted the urge the fling it into the wall, and looked over the outside. It was burnt to a crisp, and one of the sides had been ripped away so that whoever had sabotaged it could reach the inside components and fry those too. "Yeah, so?" she said impatiently. DD took the cube, and wordlessly rotated it to the side that had been inserted into the machine and thus had been hidden from view. This side wasn't nearly as badly burnt, and this allowed Shego to see a number four etched into the top left corner and the word "jap" etched into the lower right corner. "Yeah, so?" she repeated, handing it back to him.

"I don't think those were manufacturing etchings," DD explained. "I think whoever sabotaged the machine scratched them in."

"Meaning what?" Shego retorted. "The fuckers were mocking my heritage as they destroyed my life? I don't give a fuck, DD. Throw this fucking thing out and put the new one in."

"Right away, Boss," DD said, and Shego stomped off and out of the room, her anger threatening to boil over. DD looked at the cube, looked in Shego's general direction to make sure he was in the clear and then quickly stashed the cube in a spare parts box beneath his workbench. When he had some time, he wanted to look at it in a little more detail.

As it turned out, time was a precious commodity over the next six months as Shego made everyone working on the time machine, DD included, work eight-on, eight-off shifts to get it done. Installation turned out to be just as difficult as DD had predicted, and weeks went by as they struggled to place the amplifier in the machine and make sure that all of the complicated power and electronic circuits were connected properly so that they didn't blow the machine or any of its delicate, irreplaceable parts sky high when they turned on the power. After about four months, they felt secure enough to turn on the power and nothing blew up, which was a good thing. The damn thing didn't work though, so they spent the next two months adjusting things here and there, and with every adjustment, the time machine inched closer to working rather than not working. The closer they got, the more obsessive Shego got, so that by the end, the time she spent out of the workshop was stripped to the bare minimum. Sleep, food, personal hygiene, even her sporadic trips to Middleton to check on Kim all fell by the wayside as her goal got closer and closer. Then, one night in late September, it all came together.


	10. Love Child

Chapter 10 – Love Child

GJ Headquarters – One Night in Late September

Kim eased out of her chair, her back complaining as her overly-weighted front caused her center of gravity to shift into an unnatural position. She sighed as she waddled her way toward the outer office. She had forgotten how much she really despised being pregnant. Some women may have glowed; she threw up for six months, and by the time that finally stopped, her pregnancy had advanced to the point where she had to deal with an unwieldy body that she was unused to dealing with, she had to pee incessantly and she was forced to wear the god-awful GJ pregnancy uniform. She opened the door and Teresa looked up. "I'm leaving now, Teresa," she said, and Teresa nodded in agreement.

"You should have left three hours ago," she said pointedly.

Kim scowled and sighed. Teresa, along with most of her senior staff, was being sympathetic/coddling/solicitous to the point of insubordination. Ever since that damn senior staff meeting where she had made the announcement that she was pregnant, all of her section heads had been finding creative ways to surreptitiously relieve her of some of her duties or tell her that she was working too hard. Some, like Teresa and Wade, weren't even being creative about it; they just told her flat out when they thought she was pushing herself too hard.

Maybe she was working too hard, she admitted reluctantly as she pushed the button for the elevator. She had been doing everything possible to avoid thinking about Shego and work, as always, had been the easiest way to distract herself. The elevator came and Kim got in, her right hand automatically coming to rest on her stomach as she turned to face the double doors. She had been fighting with herself for months, but she still hadn't convinced herself that telling Shego was what was best for any of them, even thought Anne wasted no opportunity to guilt her about not telling the baby's other parent.

Anne had been the most vocal of those who knew who the baby's father was, but much like they were annoying her with their fawning, her section heads had been annoying her by nudging her, either subtly or in Wade's case, not so subtly, to get back in contact with Shego. She had never explicitly told them who the father was, but her people were some of the most intelligent people alive, and it took all of them a collective three seconds to put the clues together and deduce whose the kid probably was after she had told them she was pregnant. Thankfully, they hadn't been smug about it, but all of them had been gently hinting that she should tell Shego.

As Kim got off the elevator and headed toward her car, her thoughts turned to one other person that knew: Ron. Ron was the only one who knew that wasn't giving her advice about her life and she loved him the more for it. She couldn't build up the nerve to tell him, but eventually the visual clues of her pregnancy caught up with her and he had found out. He didn't propose marriage this time, but, just as he had done before when Kim was pregnant with Anne, he managed to put aside everything that had happened between himself and Kim to become exactly the friend that Kim needed. They became close again, and they had reached a peace in their relationship that had not been there for a while.

Snapping out of her thoughts when she reached her car, Kim reached out with her right thumb to activate the door. Her print was a match and the door unlocked, but before she could grab the handle, her abdomen seized up in a painful spasm and fluid came rushing down the length of her pant legs. She took calming breaths until the pain subsided before activating her earbud. "GJ Medical. How may we help you, Madame Director?" a voice inquired.

"I need to speak to the Chief Medical Officer," Kim replied shortly.

There was a brief pause and Dr. Ann Possible's voice came over the line. "What's up, Kim?" she asked.

"My water just broke, Mom," Kim answered. "I'm in the parking garage, but I will be back up there in two minutes."

Ann wanted to send a wheelchair but knew Kim would never use it. "We'll be ready for you," she said. Kim cut off the transmission and headed back towards the elevator. She hit the proper floor and waited somewhat patiently as the elevator began its ascent. The elevator stopped, the doors parted and Kim found herself face-to-face with her mother, who had a gurney waiting. "I knew you wouldn't stand for a wheelchair to bring you up. But you will get on this gurney now," she ordered. Kim sighed but climbed aboard, and her mother wheeled her into a room. As they traveled, Kim got in contact with Teresa.

"Teresa, I need you to get a hold of Anne, Ron and the Twins," she requested. "It looks like the baby has decided to make her entrance."

"Of course, Madame Director," she responded instantly. "Should I inform the senior staff as well?"

"Please do," Kim confirmed. "Dr. Porter will have to take over for me as I will soon be incapacitated."

"I will inform her and everyone else, Madame Director," Teresa answered. "And I will be down there to assist you as soon as I am finished."

"That won't be necessary, Teresa," Kim assured her.

"It will be until someone else gets here, Madame Director," Teresa contradicted. "Teresa out."

Kim shook her head as she got off the gurney to change out of her soaked clothes and into a hospital gown. Her mother drew the curtain and handed her the gown, but as she was taking it, a contraction ripped through her lower body. She let it pass, took a deep breath and hurriedly changed. She swung her bloated self on to the bed and her mother started hooking up monitors. By the time she had finished, Teresa had come in, and Kim had to admit it was nice to have her there as the contractions became more frequent and more pronounced.

Half an hour passed, and with its passage the cavalry arrived. Her section heads, having finished up any pressing items they had, got there first. They were followed closely by Anne, Tony, and Ernie; Mr. Dr. Possible came next, and finally Ron and the boys made it to the hospital wing. There was steady rotation of people in and out of Kim's room until the contractions were only a few minutes apart and Mrs. Dr. Possible kicked everyone out. They all sullenly went into the waiting room and paced around nervously until Ann Possible came back in. "It's a girl," she said proudly. "And both she and Kim are doing fine." Everyone broke out into wide smiles. Ann knew that they all wanted to see Kim and the new baby, but having fourteen people in the room was just not going to work. "You all can come in two at a time and you can only stay for five minutes," she told them. They all nodded in agreement and paired up.

The line went smoothly; Mr. Dr. Possible and Ron went first; Anne and Tony called second and the twins claimed third. Everyone else didn't care about their order as long as they got to see them. Mrs. Dr. Possible kept the line moving, and within three quarters of an hour, they had all been cycled through. As the last person went out the door, Kim took her newborn back from her mother and breathed a sigh of relief that everyone had finally left. "Thanks, Mom," she said gratefully. "I wanted them all to see her, but I am glad they didn't stay forever."

"My pleasure, sweetie," Ann Possible said. "Now the two of you should get some rest." She kissed her daughter and her granddaughter on the forehead and left the room.

The baby yawned and Kim smiled at the fulfillment of her mother's prophecy. They really did need to get some rest. Her little girl was probably hungry, too, Kim reasoned, sp she loosened her gown and offered her something to eat. It took a little doing, but soon the suckling reflex took over and her baby started to feed, allowing Kim the opportunity to study her in detail. Kim gently brushed her soft cheek with her forefinger before using the same finger to gently detach the tiny hand that was clutching her breast with surprising ferocity. All of the digits were there, and after carefully examining the tiny fingernails she let the hand fall back to its former place.

The rest of her infant was bundled up and difficult to see, but Kim couldn't help but notice a fringe of dark-colored hair escaping from underneath the pink cap on her newborn head. Kim carefully took the cap off, and a shock of black hair bristled as it followed the path of the cap. Kim smiled wryly and ran her free fingers through it. It crackled, and Kim could see the faintest hint of green highlights when the light fell just so on the dark strands. "You're Mommy's girl, aren't you?" she asked with a smirk. "If Anne had looked like you, no one would have thought she was Ron's." Kim ran her fingers through the soft hair once more and then replaced the cap so that she wouldn't lose too much heat.

The baby finished up her meal and started to drift off to sleep. Kim brought her up and thumped her gently, causing a baby-sized belch to emerge. She brought her back down and cuddled her, and her newborn blinked sleepily, exposing green-blue eyes that were almost the exact same shade that Anne's had been at that age. Eventually the eyelids became too heavy to lift and the baby fell asleep.

Kim watched her sleep for a few minutes, and in that sweet, slumbering infant face, she saw the stupidity of her choices in the last few months mirrored in every one of the baby's features that mirrored Shego. She had been fighting with herself ever since she had found out she was pregnant, weighing the desire to protect her baby from the reality of who Shego was and who she had become against the knowledge that she still loved Shego desperately and wanted her to be a part of their daughter's life. But now, holding their newborn child in her arms for the second time without having Shego by her side, she found that her choice was easy. She didn't care who or what Shego was; she just wanted Shego there.

It was selfish and hypocritical of her and she knew it. Shego was a thief and a murderer and Kim had made a promise to stop such people. She had taken away other people's mothers and fathers and broken up families because laws had been broken, yet now she was unwilling to do the same to her own child. So fucking what, she thought angrily. She was tired of being alone, tired of apologizing for who she was in love with and most of all, tired of sacrificing her life both willingly and unwillingly for GJ. If anyone had a problem with it, she really just didn't give a shit.

Her choice made, she thought about how to get Shego here. She knew of one person who would be more than happy to assist her. She gingerly got up and placed the baby in her bassinet before opening the door to her room and walking carefully out into the hallway. Her mother saw her and scowled. "You are supposed to be resting," she said disapprovingly.

"I just want to talk to Anne," Kim protested.

"I'll get her," Ann replied tersely. "You get back into bed."

Kim turned around and went back to her room, getting back into bed as her mother had requested. About a minute later, Anne popped her head into the room. "What do you need, Ma?" she asked.

"I want you to deliver a message to Shego," Kim replied. "I want you to tell her about your little sister and to ask her to come here. I have been horribly unfair and stupid, so she may not want to come, but I think she should at least know, and if she knows, she may be able to forgive me."

Anne grinned. "She'll come, Ma," she said confidently. "And it's about damn time," she added.

"Yeah, yeah," Kim said, brushing away her last comment. "But if you get her to come, remember that she is a wanted criminal."

"No, she's not," Anne disagreed. "The Boss is. And since everyone who knows she is the Boss has been after you to tell her, I don't think anyone is going to care if she shows up." Kim glared at her and Anne knew when to shut up. "I'll be careful when I bring her in," she acquiesced. She flashed another wide grin at her mother and disappeared out the door. Kim watched her go and then lay back on her pillows, knowing she needed to get some rest before Anne got back.

Anne went down the hallway into the waiting room, spotting Dr. Porter and making a request of her. "Dr. Porter, would it be possible for you to give permission for me to take out one of the hovercrafts?" she inquired. "Madame Director has a personal mission that she would like me to undertake."

Vivian smiled; it was about damn time Kim told Shego. "There will be one waiting when you get there," she answered.

Anne nodded her thanks, shared a look with Tony that told her fiancé where she was off to, and proceeded to the aircraft hangar. As promised, a hovercraft was ready to go and Anne took off immediately. She spent the trip to the Arctic thinking of what to say. Not only did she have to face her other biological parent for the first time, she also had to tell said parent that she had another daughter. She wasn't exactly sure how to start that conversation.

She landed and popped the hatch. She eschewed putting on a snowsuit; she could just light herself up so she didn't freeze and she had plenty of energy to keep herself warm for the short distance to the door. She leapt out into the snow and made her way to the front door. The locking panel had been repaired, but Anne blasted it with her plasma and the door slid obediently open. She walked into the antechamber keeping an eye out for any kind of guards, but this particular corridor was silent and empty.

She followed the map in her handheld, and as she grew closer to the Boss' office, she started encountering people. Most of them were so stunned by her blatant and unrepentant presence that they did nothing, but a few of the more well-trained guards engaged her. She incapacitated them easily, knocking most of them cold with a single blow. The last guard she faced took a little more to bring down, though, and he managed to trigger the alarm before Anne took him out.

DD looked up from the time machine's diagnostic panel as the intruder alert started to blare. "Who or what triggered the fucking alarm?" Shego demanded as she came out of the time machine's cockpit. She took a deep breath as she tried to calm herself. They had just gotten this thing to work for the second time. If someone was trying to sabotage it again or if someone did something to prevent them from using it, she really couldn't be responsible for her actions.

"I dunno, Boss." DD said, hurrying over to check the security system when he saw how agitated the Boss was getting. He pushed a couple of buttons and Anne's face appeared on the screen. "Um, Boss?" he said. "We have an unexpected guest."

Shego looked at the monitor and frowned. Something was up. GJ had left them alone for months and they had done nothing to provoke an attack. She studied the monitor. But then again, Anne wasn't really attacking. Sure, her guards would all have a headache tomorrow, but they would live, and more tellingly, if someone didn't bother her first, Anne was ignoring them to continue along her way. "Intercept her and bring her into my office, DD," she ordered. "That's where she looks like she's headed anyway."

DD nodded. "Right away, Boss," he replied, turning off the time machine's diagnostic panel before turning and leaving the room. Shego reached out a hand to touch her time machine, torn between using it and finding out what her daughter had to say. Deciding that a few more minutes of waiting was not going to kill her, she withdrew her hand and left the production floor to go to her office.

Anne checked the device in her hand once more to make sure this was the Boss' office and then walked through the door. The office was empty, but as soon as she came in, a side door slid open and Hyperkinetic walked into the room. "I want to see the Boss," Anne said promptly. "And I know she isn't you."

DD paused, slightly taken aback, but then he remembered whose daughter this was and smiled slightly. "Of course, Officer Possible," he said. "The Boss wants to see you too." He pushed the door button on his desk and the door slid open. Anne gave a curt nod of thanks and walked through the doorway.

Shego found herself holding her breath as Anne walked into her office. Sure, Kim had told her about Anne, and sure, through pictures and screens she had seen Anne and her powers, but having the person whose existence changed everything about your existence walk through the door was an extraordinary situation and to say Shego was apprehensive was to put it mildly.

Anne came in, noted the visitor's chair in front of the desk and sat down in it. She knew this conversation might take a while and she had no desire to stand. After she sat, she studied the woman across from her. The few pictures Ma had really didn't do her justice, and this close, there was no doubt that Daddy was not her father. Anne quirked a grin. "Hi, I'm Anne," she said, figuring she might as well get the conversation started so she could explain why she was here. "And you must be Shego."

Shego came to at the sound of her voice, her tone a version of Kim's but with a slightly deeper pitch. "So I am," she agreed. She gave Anne the onceover and she shook her head. The kid was practically her with red hair, and though she knew she hadn't seen it because she hadn't been looking for it, the fact that she hadn't seen it before Kim told her irritated her. "I guess your mom told you about me," she guessed.

"I figured most of it out myself," Anne replied honestly. "But she did provide one or two critical details."

Shego chuckled when Anne delivered the last line with a wry smirk. She knew it was probably nepotism, but she liked this kid. "So why are you here?" Shego asked.

"Ma sent me," Anne replied. "She wanted me to talk to you."

"Why? To get to know your father, or something like that?" Shego asked, puzzled why Kim would want this now and seemingly all of a sudden.

"I have a dad; I don't need another one," Anne said, not to be hurtful but just to state the facts. "No, the reason Ma wanted me to talk to you was that my little sister needs a dad, and Ma was hoping you could be persuaded."

Shego's brow contracted. "Little sister?" she questioned. "But you only have brothers and they are Ron's kids."

"True, but as of about six hours ago I also have a little sister," Anne corrected.

"Kim had a baby?" Shego asked, perplexed. Anne nodded. "She was pregnant?" Shego clarified. Anne nodded again. "But she told me she and Ron were divorced."

Anne sighed; Shego's utter shock and confusion were making her miss the point. "She's not Daddy's," Anne stated.

"Then whose is…you have to be fucking kidding me," Shego sputtered, as all of the clues snapped together. "You're not saying the kid's mine."

"Of course she is," Anne said, unperturbed. "It happened once; why couldn't it happen again?"

Shego had to admit that was true, but impossible happening twice was unthinkably impossible, unless it happened again, of course. She shook her head; her thoughts were making even less sense that usual. "How long has Kim known she was mine?" she asked, as a thought that did make sense found its way to the surface.

"Since she found out she was pregnant," Anne admitted.

"Then why didn't she tell me?" Shego asked, looking at Anne questioningly.

Anne saw the hurt in Shego's gaze and her face turned serious. "Ma is one of the strongest and bravest people I know," she said quietly. "But from what I've seen, you are the one person in the world that can make her weak and scared. It's obvious she loves you so much, and all that has ever done is hurt her. She kinda recovered from it once, but then she and Daddy got divorced, you were miraculously alive but still evil and then came my sister. It's a lot to deal with and I think that even as strong as she is, she couldn't handle it all. So, she didn't want to add another complication by telling you, even though she knew it was wrong. Seeing my sis made her rethink that, though."

Shego's thoughts chased themselves around her head. One part begged her to go see Kim and their new baby, realizing that Anne had a point and not caring that Kim hadn't told her. Another part screamed at her to forget what was happening now; the time machine was ready and none of this was actually going to come to be. Still other thoughts told her that she should be angry and hate Kim for not telling her about their other daughter. One voice was the loudest, though, and that was the one she went with. "Give me a few minutes," she requested. "I've been working in the shop and I need a bath before we can head down to Middleton."

Anne smiled; she knew the lure of Ma and their new baby would be too much to resist. "Yes, yes you do," she agreed, having noticed Shego's somewhat disheveled and noisome appearance from the moment she walked in. Shego raised an eyebrow at Anne's cheek. Anne smiled and Shego shook her head, heading for her quarters and her shower.

When she was ready, they left Headquarters for Anne's hovercraft and took off into the Arctic night. They didn't talk much on the way back to GJ; their relationship was still too new and the situation too awkward for jovial discourse. When they got closer, Anne put the hovercraft on autopilot and left her seat to rummage around in the back cargo compartments. She found what she was looking for and returned to her seat, tossing the packet to Shego as she disengaged the auto-pilot. "What's this?" Shego asked, opening the packet.

"A GJ maintenance worker uniform," Anne answered. "We are flying into the hangar, which is a little less secure than the front door, but you would still be noticed if you weren't in a GJ uniform."

"Won't I be noticed anyway?" Shego inquired wryly. "How many fifty-year old, pale-green mechanics do you guys have?"

"Just put on the suit and leave the rest to me," Anne said simply. Shego shrugged but did what she was told and was dressed and ready to go when they landed. Anne touched her earbud. "Tony," she said into the microphone. She waited a few seconds. "Hey Beautiful," she said when she heard the voice she wanted on the other side. "Do you think you could come down to the hangar and help me with Ma's present?" she asked. A few more seconds passed as Tony answered in the affirmative and offered further assistance. "Excellent. I'll see you in a few," Anne said, signing off.

"I was engaged to her father at one time, you know," Shego mentioned.

"You were engaged to Dr. Lipsky?" Anne asked incredulously. From what little she knew of Shego that seemed like a bad match.

"Yeah, but I was only using him to get to your mother," Shego admitted.

Anne chuckled. That made more sense. "Well, for a lot of reasons, I'm glad you didn't marry him," she said. She got up and pushed the button by the door, extending the gangplank. She peered out and smiled when she saw Tony and Ernie entering the hangar. "Hey guys," she greeted them as they came onboard. "Meet Ma's present."

Anne's oldest friend and future wife looked at her passenger. "Nice to meet you, ma'am," Ernie said politely, extending a hand.

"No one calls me ma'am," Shego informed him. "Either call me Shego or Boss. Bitch will work too."

Ernie quirked an eyebrow. "Nice to meet you, Shego," he said, with a smile.

Shego chuckled. "So how am I getting out of here without getting arrested?" she asked Anne.

"You're walking out of here with us," Anne said. "There is only one guard on duty in the hangar at this time of night and these two already took care of him. If you are with us and have a uniform, no one else will look closely enough to realize that they don't know you."

"That's it?" Shego said dubiously.

"Yup. Let's go," Anne said cheerfully. She left the craft and the other two followed her. Shego gave them a look, but walked out behind them. Ernie and Tony took up flanking positions while Anne went in front. Just as Anne had predicted, no one stopped them or even really looked in their direction and soon they reached the medical ward. Tony and Ernie broke off and went back to the waiting room to distract everyone as Anne quickly led Shego down the hallway and to the empty room next to Kim's.

"Wait here a second; I'll be right back," she promised. Shego nodded and Anne left. She took a quick look down the hallway before quickly opening the door and slipping into Kim's room. Her mom looked up in apprehension when she came in and Anne smiled in reassurance. "She's next door," she said, and her smile got wider when her mother calmed down considerably. Anne claimed her sleeping sibling from her bassinet and carefully opened the door, surprised when her mother stayed on the bed. "Aren't you coming?" she asked.

"Shego came, but she wants to see her not me," Kim said, having thought about this a lot when Anne was gone. "She might want to see me eventually, but right now, she is probably still pissed at me and I don't want to ruin her first moments meeting her daughter."

"I think you underestimate her, Ma," Anne replied, giving her mother a look. "But okay." She eased out the door into the hallway just long enough to move the one door down and to get the door open. Another second and she was in the not-so-empty room that held Shego. Shego jumped up in alarm when she came in and Anne chuckled. "Here," she said, carefully holding out the sleeping infant. "Meet your new daughter." Shego hesitantly put out her arms and Anne placed the baby in them. As soon as she felt confident that Shego wasn't going to drop her, Anne turned towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Shego asked in a mild panic. Babies were not her thing.

"I 'm going to give you two some time to get acquainted," Anne said. "If you're afraid you'll break her, I can send Ma into help you."

Shego thought about that. She was desperate to see Kim but she wanted a little time alone with her new daughter. "I think I'm okay. If I need her, I'll go next door," she decided.

Anne smiled. "I'll let her know," she said happily.

Not trusting herself to remain standing, Shego retreated to the bed, sitting down carefully as not to wake the baby. She was scared shitless, and became even more so when the baby started to stretch as she woke up. Little arms came out from underneath the blanket and Shego panicked, convinced the infant was going to fall right out of her arms. A few seconds passed and she remained safe, allowing Shego to start breathing again, but to only a few seconds later hold it in again when tiny, unfocused eyes blinked open.

It was at that point that Shego forgot to be scared. She could only focus on those beautiful eyes and that sweet face looking up at her. She captured one of the little hands that had escaped and looked it over, kissing it gently before letting it fall gently back to the blanket. The baby yawned, and Shego smiled, feeling an unfamiliar tightness in her chest at the adorable sight. Unable to help it, she drew the baby up and kissed her on the forehead, and the infant's baby-soft hair tickled her nose when she brought her back down. It was only then that she realized what color it was, and Shego took off her baby's cap to get a better look. "This is really is my little angel," she thought, all doubt gone.

Shego replaced her cap, and another crystal-clear thought asserted itself. "If you go back, she won't exist," a clear voice in her head told her. Shego looked down at the baby in anguish, realizing the voice was correct.

"But we've worked so hard and it's finally done and I am going to fix all of this," Shego protested, speaking out loud trying to silence that voice.

"If you go back, she won't exist," the voice repeated.

"Well, that's okay, right?" Shego replied, still trying to convince the voice in her head. "I mean, it will be 20 years ago. She's proof that Anne wasn't a fluke and we can have another one just like her. Couldn't we?"

"Probably," the voice agreed. "But it won't be her."

"Then I'll take her back with me," Shego decided. "We can raise her and Anne at the same time."

"If you interfere in the past, none of this will come to be," the annoyingly-logical voice pointed out. "She will disappear as soon as you change something."

"Who gives a fuck about this kid anyway?" a third voice chimed in. "Kim has done nothing but lie to us and cheat on us. How in the hell do we even know it is ours? I say take the opportunity we've been given and blow GJ up. We take Kim out, we take out all of GJ and then we can get back to being the Boss."

"Fuck being the Boss," Shego spat, silencing that voice immediately. She closed her eyes, trying to tune out the voices that were badgering her from all sides. She couldn't, and finally it became too much. "Shut up!" she screamed aloud, forgetting that she still held the baby.

The loud noise startled the newborn and she started to cry. The loud, plaintive wail cut through the room and through Shego's tempestuous thoughts and Shego came back to herself. She cuddled and rocked the baby, attempting to calm her down, but the baby was not in the mood to be comforted. Much to Shego's dismay, she started to cry harder, and she raised her little fists to her face and started to shake them in indignation, a green glow forming around them when the crying started to become particularly pronounced.

Shego's eyes widened when she saw the glow. She reached out a hand to capture one of the pissed-off little fists and smiled when she confirmed that there was actually light coming from her baby's hands. "Not bad, little angel," Shego said in admiration. According to Kim, Anne hadn't done this until she was five. "Mommy can do it better, though," she confided, sending light but not heat to her fingertips. Their two hands glowed together for a few seconds, the newborn's tiny hand cradled in Shego's much larger one, as Shego continued to rock her.

Eventually, the gentle motion calmed the baby down, and her little hands stopped glowing. Soon thereafter, she also stopped crying, and Shego blew a small sigh of relief. The baby started to drift off, tired after the outburst, and Shego looked toward the door, tempted to go next door and give the baby back to Kim before she could start crying again. The temptation just lasted until she looked down, saw that little hand still in hers and realized the last thing she wanted to do was let her go.

This kid needed her, she realized. Anne had been mellow enough for her powers not to be an issue, but this little one already had a temper and she would need someone to teach her about her powers. Kim couldn't do it; she didn't have any powers. Anne might be able to, but she was grown and getting married; it wouldn't be fair to put that kind of burden on her. No, Shego decided, she had to be the one to be there for her, and as she thought about, Shego realized she wanted to be the one that her little angel could rely on. She thought about Anne's picture frame, the one where Ron had been in almost every picture and knew that was what she wanted to be for this baby.

But what about her time machine, she thought. What about all she had done so she and Kim could start over, so she would never be the Boss and take innocent lives, so that she, Kim and Anne could be a family? Was she so readily going to give it up? She sighed. And what about Kim, her mind persisted. Kim hadn't told her about this baby. Did she really want to sacrifice everything she had done to commit to a woman who had kept this kind of information from her? She sighed again, and the clear voice that had started it all piped up again. "She didn't tell you because you are still bat-shit crazy, as evidenced by the fact that you are having this conversation with two halves of yourself," the voice calmly pointed out. "Make whatever choice you will, but don't blame Kim for making the right decision." Shego sighed again. She really had no idea what to do. Noticing the baby was asleep, she thought it was probably wise to put her back into her crib. She got up off the bed and left the room.

Kim looked up as the door to her room opened and Shego emerged holding their infant. They looked at one another for several moments before Kim found the nerve to speak. "I'm sorry, Shego," she said, her voice quiet. "I should have told you, but somehow, I just couldn't."

"Don't be sorry, Princess," Shego said, just as quietly. "You had your reasons, and it's not like I haven't done worse." She put the baby down into her bassinet and Kim got up off her bed to come stand by her. They looked at their sleeping daughter for a few minutes more and Kim hesitantly put her arm around Shego's waist. Shego reciprocated and drew Kim in, and Kim put her head down on Shego's shoulder.

"Is any of this real, Shego?" Kim asked, her tone still quiet in deference to the sleeping baby. "Has any of it been real? So many times I thought I had my life figured out, but then you show up, completely change things and disappear like some sort of apparition, leaving me to wonder if you happened at all."

"We've got living proof that it happened at least twice," Shego pointed out, half-serious, half-joking.

Kim looked up at her. "I'm serious, Shego," she chided.

"I know and I was attempting to be," Shego answered. They stood in silence for a little while longer while both thought about their situation and certain realities. Shego thought about her time machine, and based on Kim's last statement, she knew there was a question she wanted to ask. "If I hadn't disappeared, do you think we could have been happy?" she asked Kim.

Kim thought about that. "I think we could have," she decided. "Or, at the very least, with the way that we both are, we would have tried our very best."

Shego thought about that. "If there was a way to go back and fix things so that I knew about Anne and didn't disappear to become the Boss, would you want me to use it?"

Kim looked up at her, her eyebrow arching. "You didn't fix the time machine, did you?" she asked apprehensively.

"No, of course not," Shego lied smoothly. "But I could try to fix it if that was what you wanted."

"I could never want that, Shego," Kim said truthfully after a few seconds' thought. "At the very least I would lose three of my children, but, even besides that, so much could go wrong with so many different things that it's not worth it. I will fully admit that the last twenty years of my life have not been perfect, but I did enough good for the world and I was happy enough that I don't regret living them."

"But if I knew, then I wouldn't become the Boss," Shego countered. "All of those innocent lives could have been spared."

"Very true," Kim admitted. "And that's why I don't want that time machine rebuilt. I never want to have to decide between my kids' lives and the lives of others because I know the others would lose and that goes against everything I am as an officer of GJ."

At those words, Shego took a deep breath and smiled. If Kim was able to admit that she would choose her kids over everyone else, then she could too. Fuck the time machine and fixing things, she thought. She didn't have to go into the past to find her family. It was right here. "Have you given her a name yet?" she asked, changing the subject abruptly.

Kim noted the subject change but let it pass without comment. She was uncomfortable with talking about the time machine; she thought it was a horrible idea, and if Shego was thinking about it, it also made her less inclined to think that Shego was sane. "I decided on her name awhile back," she replied. "I named her Juliet Akiko Possible after both of our grandmothers. I always wanted to name my next daughter after Nana, and Akiko not only honors yours, but is appropriate because she was going to be born in the fall."

"You know who my grandmother was?" Shego asked, surprised.

"I'm the head of GJ, Shego," Kim reminded her. "You did a good job of hiding your family, but I have Wade."

"Good point," Shego said wryly.

"Do you like it?" Kim asked. "Because we can change it."

"No, keep it," Shego answered. "I like it."

Kim smiled. "So did I, except that it makes her initials 'JAP'. I hope that doesn't become an issue."

Shego frowned. "Her initials are 'JAP'?" she echoed. Kim nodded, worried that Shego was upset about the racial connotations. Shego's scowl got deeper as she tried to remember something. Those letters were significant somehow, and not just in the racial slur way. She thought harder but all of her efforts had been so engrossed with the time machine of late that she had trouble remembering…wait, her mind ordered. Those letters had something to do with the time machine, she realized, as thinking about the machine triggered her memory and more tellingly, her anger. It took a few seconds more, but then she remembered why those letters were significant and why they pissed her off. Those, along with the number four, had been the etchings on the ruined part that had sabotaged the time machine the first time around.

"What's wrong, Shego?" Kim asked, concerned and not liking the look on her face.

"I suddenly have a very bad headache," Shego replied honestly. It wasn't possible, was it? Had she really sabotaged her own machine, knowing all the while that she would drive herself insane, just so her kid could exist? She was already devoted to her little angel sure, but that was a hell of a lot of self-sacrifice. She sighed. There was only way to find out if she had actually done it, and that was to see that fucking part again. Luckily, knowing DD, he had ignored her order and probably had it stashed somewhere. "I have to go now, Princess," she said regretfully, reaching out and putting her arms around Kim. "It's complicated, but there is something that I have to do. I don't know how long I will be gone, but I promise you that I will be back, if you promise to wait for me."

"And what happens when you get back?" Kim asked, wanting to know what she was getting into if she promised.

"We're going to get married and raise our kid," Shego answered promptly.

"Then I'll wait for you forever," Kim answered. Shego smiled and kissed Kim deeply. Kim kissed back, and it wasn't until Anne came into the room that they remembered where they were and embarrassedly broke apart.

Anne smirked. "Sorry; didn't mean to interrupt," she apologized, still smirking.

"Actually, you're just the person I needed to see," Shego said. "I need you to take me back home."

"Everything okay?" Anne inquired. Everything sure looked okay, but you never knew.

"Yeah, there is just something up there that I need," Shego explained.

"Okay, I can take you back," Anne agreed.

Shego gave Kim one last kiss before she left. "I'll be back this time, Princess; I swear it," she promised.

"You'd better be," Kim warned, as she kissed back. Shego gave her one last smile as she hurried out the door after Anne.

The trip back was inconsequential, and after Shego had thanked Anne for the ride and assured her that she didn't need one back, she went inside Headquarters to track down DD. She found him on the time machine production floor and promptly asked for what she was looking for. "Where's the old amplifier out of the time machine?" she asked sternly.

"I got rid of it, Boss, just like you told me," DD lied.

"Bullshit," Shego stated. "Where is the fucking part, DD?"

DD fidgeted and reached into the spare parts box under his desk. He handed it to her. "Here you go, Boss," he said penitently.

Shego took it, rotating it to look at the scorch marks that scarred its surface. Damn it, it sure looked like her handiwork. She turned it to the less-burnt side, the one that had the initials. She lit up her right hand and touched it to the surface, unsurprised when the undamaged metal started to look like the damaged metal on the other side. She looked at the initials again and sighed. Apparently, yes, she had been stupid enough to sabotage her own machine for the sake of her baby girl. "Fuck," she swore.

She sat down on the production floor and stared at the cube for a while more while her thoughts continued to race. She thought and thought, trying to find a way around going back and screwing herself over, but there just wasn't one. If she didn't go back, the time machine would work the first time around. If the time machine worked, her past self would go even further back in the past to correct the misunderstanding about Anne and thus obliterate the future that had become their past and destroy their present future in the process. Or some fucked-up, time-paradoxical shit like that.

What is she went back and just told herself not to use it, she wondered. That way, she wouldn't have to go crazy, people wouldn't die, Kim's boys would exist and they could still have Juliet, although in order for it to be Juliet they would have to wait awhile. That could work, Shego thought, before realizing it probably wouldn't. If she went back and told herself, then her present self wouldn't exist to go back to tell her past self and there was a possibility that the machine could get used anyway. Or even if she was over thinking the temporal mechanics, there was the real possibility that her technically not-crazy-but-still-obsessed past self wouldn't believe her and would use the damn thing anyway.

As Shego debated with herself, the calm, clear voice that had been chastising her all day decided to make one last point. "If you change anything about the past, you won't keep your promise to Kim," it said simply and then remained quiet.

Shego sighed and hurled the part across the production floor. "DD, fire up the time machine," she ordered. DD gave her a look but said nothing, doing what he was told. The machine came on the door slid open. Shego went in and the door closed behind her. DD had given the control over to her panel and after she had charged up the batteries, she programmed the date into the computer. As she punched, she thought about going all the way back to the day she got out the hospital, the day that had for so long been the day that she had planned to change. She wouldn't change anything, but she would just go, just to say she had. That was a bad idea, she decided quickly. She had made the decision in Kim and Juliet's room to finally let go of the past, but she didn't trust herself enough to tempt her newly-determined resolve like that.

Her coordinates punched in, Shego pressed the launch button. The machine powered up and Shego held her breath. The machine began to vibrate and then glow. On the outside, DD kept checking his panel, waiting for the moment when this was all going to go horribly wrong. It didn't and suddenly a brilliant flash of light flooded the production floor. When he could actually see again, DD blinked. The Boss and the time machine were gone.

Hyperkinetic Syndicate Arctic Headquarters – 7 years ago

Shego cracked open an eye, looking around tentatively. Well, she was still in the cockpit of the time machine, and unless God had a really fucked-up sense of humor, she didn't suppose this was what the afterlife looked like, so she probably wasn't dead. Now the question was where and when she actually was. She pushed a button on her control panel and the door slid open. Icy snow blew in from the outside, and that encouraged Shego that she was at least in the proper location. She hopped out into the snow, and smiled when she saw the front door to Headquarters only a few paces away. Good, she thought; at least one thing went right. She unlocked the door with the general access code, quickly getting herself inside out of the cold. She found the nearest computer bay and logged in. She waited impatiently for the date and time to pop up, and when it did, she allowed herself a small moment of pride. The damn thing had actually worked.

She logged out and carefully made her way down the corridors to the production floor where the time machine was being built. She had chosen her time very carefully; she remembered this as being one of the few times where the floor was completely empty. After looking around to make sure that she was in fact alone, Shego walked over to her machine and accessed the panel that housed the amplifier. She pulled out the amplifier, but before she destroyed it she asked herself again why she was destroying it. "I don't want to go crazy, I don't want to become the Boss and I don't want to hate Kim and Anne. If I destroy this thing, all of that is going to happen," she said aloud.

"True, but if you destroy it you might have the chance to marry Kim, raise a beautiful little girl and be happier than you've ever been in your entire life," her voice answered back. "But, then again, it does suck to be crazy, so I guess it is up to you, Mad Hatter." Shego turned around and stared in shock as another Shego emerged from the shadows.

"Who the hell are you?" Shego asked, just to clarify.

"You. Isn't that obvious?" the other Shego retorted.

Yup, that was her, Shego decided. "Why are you here?" she asked.

"Because you're crazy and the stress has induced hallucinations, Bats in the Belfry," the other Shego said dismissively. "You don't know whether to choose madness and a future with Kim and your kid or choose obsession and an uncertain future. It's driving you even crazier that you already are."

Shego scowled at her. "Have you been the fucking voice that has been bugging me all day?" Shego asked as other Shego's tone seemed suddenly familiar.

"Yup, that was all me, Loony Tunes," the other version of her admitted. "But I'm all you, so really you were just talking to yourself."

If it had been someone else talking to a hallucination of herself, this might have been funny, Shego decided, but being in the middle of it sucked. And she still didn't know what to do. Should she sacrifice past Shego's future for her own or should she give them both an uncertain future? "Our past is past and we've already lived through it," the other Shego reminded her. "Let it stay in the past and give us a future we know we want." Shego looked at her and realized that was the best advice she had ever given herself. She was hesitant, but she took at deep breath and proceeded to destroy the amplifier. She lit up and within minutes she had charred it to a crisp, torn away one of the sides and destroyed the interior workings, and etched the all-important markings on the less-burnt side. She replaced it and looked at her other self. "Thanks for all of the advice," Shego said begrudgingly grateful.

Her other self smiled. "Well, here's some more: when you get back, go to a fucking shrink," she advised. She winked, turned and disappeared.

Shego shook her head and took one last look at her time machine. She sighed, still unsure about her decision, but then she turned her back on it and made her way back to her own time machine. She programmed it, pushed the button and with a flash she was back on the production floor in her own time.

The door slid open and DD came rushing in. "Boss, are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine, DD," she assured him. "Kinda."

"Kinda?" he questioned. "Didn't it work?"

"It worked," Shego replied.

"Then why is now exactly how it was?" he asked, puzzled.

"Long story," Shego said shortly. She got up from the chair and exited the machine and DD followed. She turned to DD. "I don't want to go into it, but I've got shit to do now, DD," she said. "I'm going to be leaving for a while."

"As long as the last time we tried to use this thing?" he asked.

"I hope not," Shego said quickly. "And when I do come back, we are probably going to be closing down shop. And while I'm gone, I want you to destroy the time machine."

"You're the Boss, Boss," DD said, a little confused but never one to question her orders. "We'll be here whenever you come back."

"Thanks, DD," Shego said, giving him a hug. DD was shocked, but he hugged her back. They parted and Shego gave him a pat on the back. She took one last look around and much as she had in the past, she turned and left without looking back.

The End

A/N: So originally, this is where the story was supposed to end, but, after rereading the whole thing, I realize that that you guys deserve better, because this story was damn depressing. So, if you like the way it ended, you can stop reading. If you are looking for a slightly more traditional happy ending, then I would read the epilogue.

Epilogue – The Middleton Country Club, mid-November

Shego fidgeted, trying to get used to the feel of the new suit she was wearing. She really didn't think she should really be going to this thing anyway; in spite of her invitation, she wasn't sure if she was welcome and she knew she didn't belong. But none of that had mattered to DD. As soon as she had gotten out of the loony bin and made her way back to Headquarters, he had handed her the invite and sent her to be fitted for the suit she was now wearing. And, a few days later, when it was finished, he made her get ready, turned a deaf ear to her protests and loaded her into a hovercraft, dropping her off in front of the country club with an admonition to have a good time.

It wasn't that she didn't want to see her ladies; Anne, Juliet and especially Kim had been on her mind constantly. It was just that she was hoping for a nice, quiet, intimate reunion at Kim's house and instead she was one of five hundred people that were here for the wedding of the year. Quiet and intimate it was not going to be, and if Shego hadn't had such a desire to at last be there for one of Anne's life-changing events, she never would have let DD sucker her into this.

She took a deep breath and made her way toward the entrance. Security was tight, and she had to wait for a few minutes as people's credentials were checked. In spite of her nerves, she managed a small grin. This was an odd set of people, that was for damn sure, as she saw GJ officers waiting in line with the Seniors and the Killigans. At last her turn came and she stepped up to Security, handing them her invitation.

"Thank you, ma'am," the GJ agent said, taking it and putting it through the scanner. He frowned as Shego's information popped up. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but you didn't RSVP. Without the prerequisite security check, we can't let you in."

"She's with Madame Director," a voice informed him. "And if you don't let her in, she will put you on information desk duty until you retire."

The agent looked up to see Dr. Load, the head of CSS standing right behind him. "But sir, she hasn't been checked," he protested.

"She doesn't need to be," Wade told him sternly. "I will vouch for her myself." The agent looked conflicted, but he wasn't going to contradict a section head. He waved Shego through and Wade nodded. He took Shego by the arm and led her down a corridor before he spoke. "I take it Kim doesn't know you are coming?" he asked.

"I didn't know I was coming until a few days ago," Shego admitted.

"Then we should probably tell her now, rather than just have you show up at the ceremony," he decided. He smiled as he led her down a different corridor. "It's good to see you, Shego," he said. "It's been a long time."

Shego smiled back at him. "Too long," she agreed.

Wade smiled and then stopped short, coming to a halt in front of a door. He knocked and a voice answered. "Who is it?" it asked.

'Wade," he replied. "I have someone who needs to see you, Kim."

"Does it have to be right now?" she asked through the door.

"It's very urgent," Wade confirmed.

Kim sighed, wondering if the disparate guest list was coming back to haunt them. She opened the door and glared at Wade. "Well, who is it?" she demanded.

"Someone who forgot to RSVP," he said, stepping aside to reveal Shego. He saw the look that was Kim giving Shego and he decided to make his exit. "Bye, Kim," he said with a smile before he turned and left.

"I'm sorry that I didn't tell you…" Shego began.

"Are you back to stay?" Kim interrupted her, moving in closer.

"I'll be here as long as you'll have me," Shego replied, taking a step closer herself.

"Then shut up," Kim ordered, pulling her into a kiss.

Shego chuckled as her arms went around Kim, and the smile didn't leave her face for the remainder of the evening. She had her princess, she had her family and the past no longer had any control over her.


End file.
